"I Refuse to Be the First Fatality": Elon Musk's The Boring Company's Safety Record Reportedly Left Employees Fearing For Their Lives

Recent investigations into The Boring Company, a tunnel construction startup founded by Elon Musk, have raised significant concerns over worker safety at its project sites. A recent investigation by Fortune found a widespread lack of accountability, dangerous working conditions, and a series of injuries that surfaced, casting a shadow over the company’s ambitious mission to revolutionize transportation through underground tunneling.

In May, an alarming email from an employee at the Bastrop, Texas, site to the company's then–safety manager, Wayne Merideth, revealed the dire situation: “I feel that the company as a whole has been very fortunate these past few months that there hasn't been a fatality,” the employee wrote. This message was just one of many warnings that Merideth received during his tenure, indicating a consistent disregard for employee safety under the pressure to meet high expectations and tight deadlines.

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Merideth’s attempts to address these safety concerns were reportedly undermined by senior management, leading to his eventual departure from the company. His experience is part of a broader narrative of safety issues at The Boring Company, which reported 36 injuries across its job sites to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) within a six-month period in 2023.

The Boring Company’s pursuit of its goals has resulted in working conditions that have exposed employees to serious injuries or even death. An OSHA investigation last summer, initiated by an anonymous tip, found that employees at the Las Vegas project site were at risk of burns from accelerant chemicals, among other hazards.

Despite raising over $795 million in capital and holding a vision for a transformative Hyperloop system, The Boring Company’s operational reality appears starkly different. Its only functioning tunnel, a 2.4-mile stretch in Las Vegas, falls short of the grandiose ambitions set by Musk and enforced by Boring’s president, Steve Davis. The pressure to advance these projects has led to an environment where safety considerations are sidelined in favor of progress.

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Fortune’s investigation, based on interviews with former employees and a review of thousands of pages of documents, reveals a culture of negligence towards worker safety. Employees recount hazardous conditions, including exposure to dangerous chemicals, insufficient protective equipment, and the relentless drive to continue work regardless of the risks.

These findings are not isolated incidents but part of a pattern of safety issues across Musk’s enterprises. The Boring Company’s challenges echo past concerns at other Musk-led companies, where the push for innovation has sometimes come at the expense of employee well-being. For example, in 2023, a court found that Tesla violated labor laws by trying to silence workers about harsh working conditions.  Tesla, before that, was also found to have violated labor laws by preventing employees from unionizing. 

In late 2023, Reuters similarly ran a story exposing dangerous conditions at SpaceX. The report, which highlighted a strong of deaths and injuries at the SpaceX facilitiy over the years. In 2014, there was a widely reported death of a 38-year-old retired marine at the SpaceX facility. Since that death, Reuters reported there have since been over 600 injuries at SpaceX.

As The Boring Company continues its endeavors, the recent OSHA citations and ongoing scrutiny from former employees and safety advocates underscore the critical need for a balance between ambitious technological advancement and the fundamental right to a safe working environment. The future of Musk’s vision for underground transportation may well depend on his ability to prioritize the safety and welfare of those tasked with turning his ambitious ideas into reality.

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