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Elon Musk lauds Chinese workers for ‘burning the 3 am oil’, slams Americans for ‘avoiding work’

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has praised Chinese workers while taking a dig at American employees during an online interview with Financial Times. He lauded Chinese workers for “burning the 3 am oil” while remarked about Americans “avoiding work”.

“Well, I think the company making the most progress besides Telsa is actually VW, which is not a start-up, but could be viewed as a start-up from the electrical vehicle standpoint, so VW is doing the most on the electric vehicle front,” the billionaire told FT.

“I think there will be very strong companies coming out from China. There are a lot of super-talented, hardworking people in China who strongly believe in the manufacturing,” Musk said.

“They won’t just be burning the midnight oil, they will be burning the 3 am oil. So, they won’t even leave the factory technically, whereas in America people are trying to avoid going to work at all,” Musk said as the interviewer chuckled.

Musk’s endorsement of long working hours did not go down well with netizens. Users slammed him for endorsing “slavery” and harsh working conditions.

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Amid the stringent Covid lockdown in Shanghai, Telsa Inc restarted production in April, this year. A memo cited by Bloomberg said the company would provide a bag and mattress to each worker who would sleep on the floor in a designated area. The Bloomberg report also said that employees were asked to work 12 hours a day, continuously for six days with one day off.

Meanwhile, the electric vehicle manufacturing company was sued in February this year by the state of California over alleged discrimination against Black employees in the Bay Area flagship factory, New York Post reported.

Musk had endorsed long working hours earlier as well. In an interview with Recode’s Kara Swisher, Musk said in 2018, “I haven’t counted exactly, but I would just sort of sleep for a few hours, work, sleep for a few hours, work, seven days a week,” he said. “Some of those must have been 120 hours, or something nutty. You’re gonna go a little bonkers if you work 120 hours a week.” Further talking about working hours in Telsa, he said, “Now we’re down to 80 or 90. It’s pretty manageable.”

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