Rivian Workers Face Extremely Dangerous Factory Conditions

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Oct 23, 6:40AM EDT

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Rivian Workers Face Extremely Dangerous Factory Conditions — © Rivian Normal Plant Floor (CC BY-SA 4.0) by Rivian

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Rivian Automotive Inc. (NASDAQ RIVN | RIVN Price Prediction) factory workers reportedly are not safe as they do their jobs.
Worker safety is just one of the problems facing the EV maker.
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Bloomberg ran a horrible takedown of safety violations in Rivian Automotive Inc. (NASDAQ RIVN) factories titled “Cracked Skull, Fractured Bones Show Danger for Rivian Factory’s Workers.” Workers, it reported, are not safe under many circumstances.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has hit Rivian with 16 serious violations in 21 months. The largest car companies in the United States had many fewer such actions, and some had none. Management tried to counter the accusation that its factories were unsafe but, balanced against the violations, its comments were less than an excuse.

Even without worker safety problems, Rivian is in deep trouble. Some car industry experts and investors believe the company will not survive, at least as an independent public company.

Rivian only produced 13,157 vehicles and delivered 10,018 during the third quarter. It has not released its third-quarter financials. However, in the second quarter, it had revenue of $1.1 billion, on which it lost $1.2 billion. There is no reason to believe the losses will not occur in future quarters.

The company not only has a sales problem. It has a price problem as well. During a period when the electric vehicle industry is trying to cut retail prices to bring in customers, some Rivian models are priced close to $100,000. In addition, people considering a Rivian have to worry about whether the company will stay in business.

Three Glaring Problems Facing Rivian

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.