California Agency Sues Tesla For Alleged Racial Discrimination And Harassment
On Wednesday, a California state agency filed a lawsuit accusing Tesla Inc of tolerating discrimination against Black workers at an assembly plant, mirroring claims in several other pending cases against the electric-car maker, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The California agency said that it had received “hundreds of complaints from workers” and found evidence that the Fremont factory is a “segregated workplace where black workers are subjected to racial slurs and discriminated against in job assignments, discipline, pay and promotion creating a hostile work environment,” said the agency’s director, Kevin Kish, in a statement, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The department claimed Black Tesla workers were subjected to racist graffiti and racial slurs. The agency said it filed its lawsuit at Alameda county superior court late on Wednesday and would make the complaint available to the public on its website on Thursday.
In a blogpost Tesla described the lawsuit as “misguided” and said it would ask the court “to pause the case and take other steps to ensure that facts and evidence will be heard”.
“Tesla strongly opposes all forms of discrimination and harassment and has a dedicated Employee Relations team that responds to and investigates all complaints,” Tesla added.
Tesla called the legal action was “unfair and counterproductive” and pointed out that it’s the “last remaining automobile manufacturer in California” and that the workforce at its Fremont factory is predominantly minority.
It comes after we reported that former Tesla factory worker Kaylen Barker filed a lawsuit against the company on Tuesday alleging that she suffered racist abuse and a physical assault from a coworker. In the lawsuit seen by Business Insider – she reportedly says that Tesla failed to address the abuse and retaliated against her after she reported it.
“I was violated physically, mentally, and emotionally because I am an African American lesbian,” Barker said in a statement provided to Insider via her attorney.
The suit against Tesla and staffing company Staffmark alleges that in September after Barker asked the offending employee to step back from some machinery for safety reasons, the accused called Barker the N-word and threw a hot grinding tool at her. She said that the tool hit her in the thigh.
Barker says she then reported the incident to HR and the employee was fired but the suit claims Tesla then rehired the offending employee two weeks later.
According to the Business Insider, the suit also says HR informed Barker shortly after the incident that she was under investigation.
She claims she was then called into HR on a near-daily basis and was demanded to sign documents claiming she was “insubordinate.” Subsequently, she was repeatedly sent home for the afternoon — therefore losing out on money — until she was ultimately fired from the company on October 29 of last year.
