This explosive lawsuit could widen the rift between Tesla CEO Elon Tesla and the state where he founded the company. Tesla now has a value of more than $900billion, 20 years after Musk started his mission to transform the automobile industry.
After publicly arguing with California officials about whether Tesla’s factory should be closed during the spring 2020, while the coronavirus pandemic still was in its early stages, Musk moved Tesla’s headquarters to Austin, Texas.
The lawsuit of 39 pages was filed Wednesday night in Alameda County Superior Court. It is a claim that Tesla’s decision to move to Texas is an attempt to avoid accountability for not paying attention to the years of complaints by Black workers protesting common use of racial slurs at the assembly line.
The lawsuit claims that Musk told workers to be “thick skinned” about racial harassment. This contributes to a culture that is slow to remove racist graffiti and other hateful symbols from the factory.
According to the lawsuit, the N-word was not the only racist language used at the factory. Other descriptions of Black workers included comparisons to “hood rats” or “porch monkeys” and suggestions that they “go to Africa.” Also, the complain claims that the factory was racially divided. This led to the Black workers in the area being called “slave ship” or “the plantation.”
Tesla posted an statement before the news about the lawsuit broke. It lashed out at what it called an “unfair, counterproductive” lawsuit.
According to the company, the agency was asked nearly 50 times over the past five year to investigate allegations of harassment and discrimination. Each investigation was closed without any evidence of misconduct.
“It therefore strains credibility of the agency to now allege that systematic racial harassment somehow existed at Tesla,” wrote the company, while trying to portray the lawsuit as a publicity stunt.
According to the lawsuit, the 32-month-long investigation into Tesla’s discriminatory practices led to the allegations against Tesla. The lawsuit seeks to recover pay from Black employees who were unfairly overlooked for promotions and raises, reinstatement of workers who lost jobs due to discriminatory reasons, as well as punitive damages.
Musk, who regularly uses his Twitter account of 73 million followers for comments about Telsa issues, had not posted anything on Thursday about the discrimination suit.
It is not the first time Tesla has been criticized for its treatment of 15,000 workers at Fremont’s California factory. It is located approximately 40 miles (65 km) southwest of San Francisco and remains Tesla’s largest manufacturer of electric vehicles. The company has also opened new plants in Texas.
A federal jury awarded $137million in damages last October to a former Black elevator operator. He had claimed that he was subjected to daily racist slurs, harassment and other forms of harassment at Fremont in 2015 and 2016. Before quitting, he worked at Fremont in 2015. Tesla appeals the verdict. Owen Diaz, the former elevator operator, claimed that he was unaware of any racist acts that were committed at the Fremont plant.
The lawsuit was filed by more than 50 former and current employees of Tesla alleging that the company failed to take sufficient steps to protect them from sexual harassment. Tesla seeks to transfer these complaints into arbitration.
David Lowe, one the lawyers representing Tesla’s women accused of sexual harassment, described the latest lawsuit as an example of “an extremely toxic culture and environment that many employees are working within” — something that seemed to be contrary to the company’s reputation for being at the forefront of technology.
Lowe stated that Tesla is “so advanced at one level” and “but when it comes to how its employees are treated, the racial harassment, and sexual harassment, it almost seems like a company from another era.” They are so far behind in the way they treat their employees.
According to Tesla’s most recent employment breakdown, 10% of its U.S. employees are Black while 21% are women.