A group of African-American Tesla workers filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk’s car company, alleging that they were subjected to racial discrimination in its California factories.
Currently, Tesla faces the minus 10 sexual or racial harassment lawsuits, including one recently filed by a company shareholder accusing it of having a toxic work environment, as well as another filed by a civil rights agency.
According to the lawsuit filed in California state court, 15 former and current African-American employees said they regularly endured offensive comments from colleagues, managers, and human resources employees, as reported by Gizmodo.
Some of the comments mentioned in the lawsuit include the words “n”, “slavery” or “plantation”, as well as sexual comments. Aside from the offensive comments, the plaintiffs also claimed that they were often assigned the most physically demanding jobs in factories or passed over for promotions.
Most of the the acts of harassment allegedly took place at the Tesla factory in Fremont, California.
In response to earlier accusations of racial profiling, Valerie Capers Workman, vice president of people for Tesla, issued a statement in October of 2021, arguing that “racial slurs were used in a friendly manner at the Fremont factory”.
This is not the first time that the car manufacturing company has been accused of racial discrimination.
In October 2021, a federal jury in San Francisco ordered Tesla to pay a former African-American contractor $137 million dollars because he was subjected to racial discrimination at work. The amount was later reduced to $15 million dollars after Tesla disputed the allegations.
In February 2021, Tesla faced another discrimination lawsuit filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing that said the company discriminated against its workers of color by segregating them into lower positions in the workforce.
Furthermore, earlier this month, a Tesla shareholder filed a lawsuit against the company, accusing Elon Musk and the Tesla board of directors of harming their stock by ignoring worker complaints and fostering a toxic workplace.
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