A California state government agency has filed a lawsuit against Tesla, accusing the company of allowing racial discrimination and harassment to flourish at a factory in the San Francisco Bay Area; the process was revealed on Thursday (10).
The California Department of Employment and Housing Equality said hundreds of Tesla workers have reported being subjected to racist graffiti and the widespread use of racial epithets, which includes their use by supervisors. They also accused the company of discriminatory practices. The agency said black workers were given more physically strenuous tasks and had their transfer and promotion requests denied more often than other workers.
“After receiving hundreds of complaints from workers, the department found evidence that the Tesla factory in Fremont is a racially segregated workplace in which black workers are subjected to racial epithets and are discriminated against in job assignments, discipline, compensation and promotions, which creates a hostile work environment,” Kevin Kish, the department’s director, said in a statement. “The facts of the case speak for themselves.”
In a statement posted online Wednesday, before the lawsuit was revealed, Tesla said it “strongly opposes” all forms of discrimination and harassment. The company criticized the lawsuit, arguing that the state agency had investigated dozens of previous complaints over the past few years and had found no misconduct.
“It is therefore almost unbelievable that the agency now claims, after a three-year investigation, that systematic racial discrimination and harassment exists at Tesla in any way,” the company said. “A narrative imagined by the department and a handful of plaintiff companies in order to generate publicity does not constitute factual evidence.”
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
The company said that at its Fremont factory “minorities are a majority in the workforce” and described the process as counterproductive “at a time when manufacturing jobs are leaving California”. The company moved its headquarters to Texas last year and opened a new factory near Austin.
Tesla also said the California state agency had rejected its requests for information about the charges. The company plans to ask the court to “suspend the case and take other steps to ensure that the facts and evidence are heard,” it added.
In October, a federal jury in San Francisco awarded $137 million in damages to a former black Tesla employee who said he faced racial discrimination from a supervisor and other colleagues while working at Tesla. Fremont factory in 2015 and 2016. Workers drew swastikas and spray-painted a racial epithet in a bathroom and left derogatory caricatures of black children scattered around the factory, he said.
The following month, Jennifer Barraza, another Tesla worker, filed a lawsuit against the company, accusing it of widespread sexual harassment, both verbal and physical. Six other women filed lawsuits against the company in December, complaining of similar treatment.
Translation by Paulo Migliacci
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