Every day across the south workers are killed on the job, stolen from, discriminated against, or sexually harassed. Sometimes the employers are caught. These are last week’s stories, this is Boss Watch.
Alabama Exploiters
Managers for an Alabama construction company have been arrested in Italy on suspicion of international labor exploitation. The company, Caddell Construction, was tasked with building a $350M American Consulate in Milan, Italy and were paying workers less than $2/hr.
The workers – largely migrant workers from Kenya and India – were initially promised significantly more, though still not nearly enough at about $29,000 annually. However, once they got to Milan, room and board was illegally deducted from their pay. They were also forced to work 10 hour days and 6 day weeks. When they protested, demanding the pay they were promised, the company told them that number was not a promise a payment and was just “for visa purposes,” and they were threatened with defamation lawsuits and deportation.
The investigations were opened by prosecutors in Italy. The US State Department also claims to be looking into the allegations, and the CGIL – Italy’s labor federation – said they intend to seek back pay and damages for the workers.
Texas Endangerers
A 25 year old worker at Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s South Texas facility died on the job in May after falling 50 feet. Elon Musk hasn’t commented on the death.
OSHA is still investigating the death and hasn’t made any statement on it yet. While this death is the first at Starbase, the Texas Observer reviewed safety records at that facility, at Elon Musk’s other companies, and other SpaceX location and detailed several more deaths and more injuries than the industry average. From their article:
“Just among its own employees (in South Texas)—not including those working for contractors on-site—SpaceX saw 427 injuries and 9 respiratory illnesses between January 6, 2022, and June 10, 2025, according to documents SpaceX filed with OSHA and acquired by the Observer through a records request. These injuries included concussions, second-degree burns, partial finger amputations, hernias, dislocations, crushed hands, and broken ribs, legs, and ankles.”
When the Observer compared these rates to other facilities, they found that “the company had an injury rate that’s more than five times the national average for comparable space vehicle manufacturing facilities in the United States. The company’s facility in Hawthorne, California, which has more than twice the employees of Starbase, has less than half the injury rate of the South Texas site.”