Read our editorial on the deepening economic crisis of imperialism here.
Worker Hans Kohls sued Tesla for discriminatory termination last year from the auto and tech monopoly’s Austin, TX “Gigafactory”. Kohls claims in a November 10 lawsuit the company fired him for requesting a transfer to another department when extreme heat at his station caused his hearing aids to malfunction. Kohls was employed at Tesla’s Austin plant as an equipment technician and is deaf.
In retaliation for speaking up for workers’ safety, Kohls not only lost his job, but also lost health insurance for himself and his wife, who was pregnant at the time. He is demanding his job back as well as back pay and other damages from the monopoly, citing breaches of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
After training in cooler stations, Kohls was assigned to the Casting Department, where high-pressure die-casting operations melt aluminum at 1,220°F. The extreme temperatures and humidity in the department caused his hearing aids to fail, making it impossible for him to hear instructions, alarms, or safety signals. The lawsuit says the temperatures in the casting department “far exceed standard industrial heat levels.”
Tesla’s termination notice cited the reason as “medical separation” simply, labeling him medically unfit for a post exposing him and his fellow workers to extreme heat and humidity, trampling on workers’ rights. Hot working conditions without heat breaks and other safety measures imposed by the capitalists cause 28,000 injuries to workers a year, according to a 2025 George Washington University and Harvard study, with such injuries concentrated in agriculture, construction, and manufacturing. Relatedly, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health cites that 46% of all manufacturing workers are exposed to unsafe levels of noise, with 28% not given adequate hearing protection.
Kohls was fired from the same “Gigafactory” known for the killing of electrician Victor Joe Gomez, Sr. last year.
Tesla injures workers as a common practice across its plants, and then covers it up as revealed in 2019 Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) reports. To name a few instances, in early 2025, OSHA fined Tesla a paltry amount for exposing workers to dangerous heat levels without adequate breaks at its Fremont, CA plant. At 2023 in the same plant, a worker was seriously injured when she became stuck in a car on a conveyor belt that was not shut down properly. A robotic arm smashed and seriously injured a worker at the same plant in 2023, and another robot clawed a worker at the Austin plant in 2021, bloodying him and sending him tumbling down a trash chute when another worker shut down the machine to save him.
While workers are inured by the capitalists and fired for standing against unsafe working conditions, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is set to become the world’s first trillionaire.
Image: The Tesla “Gigafactory” in Austin, TX. Wikimedia Commons.
The Worker is an entirely volunteer-run revolutionary newspaper free from and radically antagonistic to corporate influence. We rely on the support of our readers to sustain our editorial line in service of the working class and the reconstitution of its party, the Communist Party. Make a one-time or recurring donation to our newspaper today:
Make a one-time donation
Make a monthly donation
Make a yearly donation
Choose an amount
Or enter a custom amount
Your contribution is appreciated.
Your contribution is appreciated.
Your contribution is appreciated.
