Tesla Thanks China for Letting Shanghai Factory Reopen with Live-In Workers

Tesla, the electric car company owned by billionaire Elon Musk, on Monday announced its “Shanghai Gigafactory” would reopen after three weeks of Shanghai’s harsh coronavirus lockdown.

Tesla thanked the Chinese Communist government for allowing its factory to reopen under a “closed-loop system,” which means employees will live on the premises and sleep on the factory floor.

Bloomberg News on Monday reported seeing a copy of a memo to Tesla’s Shanghai employees in which the company said they would each be provided with a sleeping bag and mattress and directed to camp on an unused portion of the factory floor. The memo said other parts of the factory would be devoted to “showering, entertainment, and catering.”

“All employees will have to take a nucleic acid test daily for the first three days, have their temperature checked twice a day and wash their hands four times a day, twice in the morning and twice again in the afternoon,” Bloomberg reported.

The memo indicated that only fully-vaccinated employees currently living in the “lowest-risk residential compounds” would be allowed to join the roughly 400 staffers already living inside the factory. Employees were told to expect to work 12-hour shifts with one day off every six days.

The “closed-loop system” was expected to remain in effect until May 1, unless Shanghai officials decide to end the lockdown early.

China’s state-run Global Times said 8,000 employees were living and working in the Tesla factory as of Monday, with something close to full production expected to resume “within three or four days.”

The Global Times reported Tesla employees were videotaped by surveillance drones carrying luggage into the factory on Monday, and a shuttle bus presumably full of staffers was seen near the plant.

“The company said it extended its appreciation to the government for the support and coordination to return to work,  while emphasizing that ensuring safe production is still the highest priority,” the article stated.

Tesla has an uncomfortably close relationship with the brutal Chinese government. Regime media loves to quote approving comments about the Chinese Communist system from Tesla executives. Tesla insisted on opening a store in the Uyghur region of East Turkistan, which China calls Xinjiang, even as the world recoiled in horror from China’s genocidal oppression and enslavement of the Uyghur Muslims who live there.

The Global Times reported on Monday that other multinational firms are eager to restart operations in Shanghai under “closed-loop systems” that would trap their employees inside sealed factories:

As the country’s industry watchdog said last week it had drawn up a “white list” of 666 firms prioritized to resume production, the first group of businesses to resume production was mainly in the semiconductor, auto and medical supply sectors, the city’s economic backbones, and foreign firms made up a large part of this batch.

Multiple foreign companies operating in Shanghai, including German chemical company BASF, US manufacturing company 3M and chemical company DuPont, vowed support for the resumption plan, saying they are exploring ways to restore capacity under government guidance.

When approached by the Global Times on Monday, the three companies also denied online rumors that suggested the three companies had rejected the work resumption plan, and claimed the guidelines launched by local authorities were “unreasonable.”

Germany’s Merck said its Shanghai plant “has been operating at partial capacity since early April with closed-loop management over some of its employees.” 

Unnamed representatives from some other foreign companies told the Global Times they are attempting to ferry employees from home quarantine to workplaces, with considerable difficulty, or allowing staffers to work from home.