Today, as the Wall Street Journal reported, a California regulatory agency filed a lawsuit against Tesla Inc. The latter is accused in racial discrimination and harassment.
The lawsuit filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing targets alleged workplace issues at Tesla’s Fremont factory.
DFEH says that they have got hundreds of complaints from workers. So they found evidence that “Tesla’s Fremont factory is a place where Black workers suffer from racial slurs” and not only.
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The company criticized the civil-rights agency’s investigation in a blog post that pre-empted the lawsuit. “Tesla strongly opposes all forms of discrimination and harassment and has a dedicated Employee Relations team that responds to and investigates all complaints,” the company said Wednesday.
Tesla Doesn’t Accept Accusations
Though the company didn’t respond immediately, in a blog post, the company criticized the civil-rights agency’s investigation. At the same time, it said that “Tesla strongly opposes all forms of discrimination and harassment and has a dedicated Employee Relations team that responds to and investigates all complaints.”
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To save the situation, in the same blog post, Elon Musk’s company talked about its role in California. “Tesla is also the last remaining automobile manufacturer in California. The Fremont factory has a majority-minority workforce and provides the best paying jobs in the automotive industry to over 30,000 Californians,” the company said. That’s why they think that the legal action is “unfair and counterproductive.”
By the way, last year, the company moved its headquarters to Texas from California. But it still manufactures a huge number of its cars in California.
Anyway, the lawsuit is not groundless. According to the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, Tesla supervisors and managers insult the company’s Black workers. One of the Black employees said he was hearing racial slurs as often as 50 to 100 times a day. Apart from this, their managers assigned them to more physically demanding roles. And it turns out, in the Tesla factory, there are more severe disciplines. Looking at the Tesla reports, we can see that Black employees made up 10% of its U.S. workforce and 4% of people in leadership roles.
Interestingly, this is not the first case. Last year, a federal jury in San Francisco found that Tesla was making a Black employee work in a racially hostile work environment. As a result, Tesla had to pay over $137 million as compensation.
