Three former SpaceX supervisors told Reuters that Musk would have machinery painted in industrial safety yellow repainted to black or blue because of he didn’t like how it looked. The ex-supervisors also said that some workers were told not to wear yellow safety vests when Musk was on site.
It says they couldn’t wear yellow safety vests, but I’m guessing, at least at first, that they didn’t have two colors of safety vest available for all employees.
And repainting machines unsafe colors because you don’t like yellow?
Just criminal assholeishness. If he wasn’t so rich, he would be charged with reckless endangerment.
This could either be horrible or mean absolutely nothing.
Hypothetically, you don’t actually need to wear a hi-vis safety vest if you are in an office. It’s only required in high traffic areas and usually with heavy equipment moving. Additionally many machines are painted yellow, or various other colors. This isn’t necessarily for safety reasons. For example some machine enclosement doors will be painted yellow or some other color, this has zero effect on the safety of operating the machine. Infact painting is primarily to identify parts or sections of the machine, not safety reasons, that’s what enclosures and interlocks are for.
The requests could be illegal, or it could be merely aesthetic.
Considering workplace hazards are a real problem at SpaceX, I don’t think it’s likely to be merely aesthetic.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/spacex-musk-safety/