Media

5 Most Important Things in Business Today

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: August 17, 2018 5:07 am

Last Updated: January 11, 2020 7:15 pm

Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) faces accusations it spied on workers. According to Reuters:

An employee fired from Tesla Inc’s Nevada battery factory filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, accusing the company of spying on employees and failing to act after learning that a Mexican cartel may be dealing drugs inside the plant, his attorney said on Thursday.

A former member of Tesla’s internal investigations team, Karl Hansen, filed a tips, complaints and referrals form to the SEC about the Gigafactory on Aug. 9, Hansen’s attorney Stuart Meissner said in a news release. Whistleblowers can receive 10 percent to 30 percent of penalties the SEC collects.

Google is being pressed by people who believe it will cooperate too much with the government as it returns to China. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai defended to employees the internet giant’s controversial push to do more business in China but said the company is “not close to launching a search product” in the country, according to a person briefed on the comments.

Mr. Pichai, speaking Thursday at a weekly all-hands meeting in Mountain View, Calif., was responding to criticism from employees, human rights groups and others who in recent days have voiced concerns over the Alphabet Inc. unit’s work with the Chinese government. Google is developing services for Chinese citizens, including a search engine that could adhere to China’s strict censors, The Wall Street Journal and others reported last week.

An analyst believes Tesla will lose huge sums on its new Model 3. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Tesla Inc. is making an operating profit of more than $3,000 on each sale of the current low-price version of its Model 3 sedan, but would likely lose nearly twice that amount if it sold the vehicle at its long-promised $35,000 price tag, according to a new estimate from UBS Securities LLC.

The Model 3’s profitability is a critical issue for the electric-car maker, which began selling the vehicle a year ago as it sought to move from a luxury niche into the mass market, and end years of losses.

Grocery sales were a key to Walmart Inc.’s (NYSE: WMT) recent earnings success. According to The New York Times:

Walmart’s many efforts to bolster its food shopping services — including letting customers order online and pick up in person, expanding its home delivery of groceries, even experimenting with robots — appear to be paying off, the company said on Thursday.

The company, the largest grocer in the United States with a 23 percent share of the market, said that the grocery division’s performance last quarter was its best in nine years, propelling a crucial measure of sales to its largest increase in a decade.

Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. (NYSE: CMG) will teach its workers to handle food better after a series of food poisoning incidents. According to CNNMoney:

Chipotle will retrain its entire staff after customers got sick at an Ohio restaurant last month.

CEO Brian Niccol said in a statement on Thursday that that starting next week, every Chipotle employee will receive a new training on “food safety and wellness protocols.” As of June, the company employed about 70,000 people across roughly 2,450 locations.