Tesla wants its staff to stay in China factory until mid-June

Bloomberg

Tesla Inc plans to keep employees at its Shanghai factory working in a so-called closed loop system — where staff are ferried to and from work and tested for Covid-19 regularly — until mid-June, people familiar with the matter said, even as Chinese authorities move to ease wider lockdown restrictions in the city.
Thousands of the electric car maker’s workers have been sleeping on the floor of Tesla’s factory south of Shanghai doing 12-hour shifts, six days a week, to reboot production after a weeks-long pause because of the lockdown.
Tesla wants to move those workers into a dormitory and keep them in a form of closed loop until June 13 at this stage, the people said, declining to be identified because the plans are private.
Tesla is also trying to start a second shift at the factory as soon as next week so that car production can resume operating around the clock once the supply of auto parts and other components becomes smoother, the people said.
Executives are now negotiating with Shanghai authorities over accommodation for workers on the existing and planned shifts, the people said. They could be housed in temporary dorms or vacant Covid-19 isolation centers, according to one of the people.
The company had hoped most workers could be bussed from their own homes on door-to-door shuttles daily, but community-level officials vetoed the idea, saying that if people left their apartments, they wouldn’t be allowed back, the people said.