“Black workers (y) experience racial slurs and discrimination in terms of tasks, discipline, pay and promotion, which creates a hostile work environment. The facts in this case speak for themselves”.
Racial slurs
The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing emailed excerpts of the complaint filed “late in the afternoon” in a California court, while Tesla had already communicated in the morning about its lawsuits, before they were confirmed. “Tesla strongly opposes all forms of discrimination and harassment and has a dedicated employee relations team to respond to and investigate all complaints,” the group said in a statement, which mentions a three-year investigation, focusing on facts that allegedly took place at the Fremont plant between 2015 and 2019.
“All day, every day, black or African-American employees hear racial slurs about black workers, from other employees, from chefs and managers,” the complaint says. She cites many examples of rare verbal abuse, including the “N-word” (an allusion to the derogatory term for black people), a term that has become unpronounceable by white people in the United States. “Because the plant is racially segregated, the plant employees called the areas where many African-Americans worked the ‘porch monkey station,’ literally ‘the monkey-don’t-give-a-damn area,'” the complaint said.
Widespread racial harassment
The complaint points out that black employees were assigned to physically more difficult tasks than others at Tesla plants, that they were more easily fired for minor offenses and promoted much less frequently.
“For many black workers, the stress of widespread racial harassment, the risk of physical altercations with stalkers, blatant discrimination, disproportionate discipline and inaction in the event of a complaint made their working conditions so intolerable that they resigned,” the complaint states.
Several employees and ex-employees of the group led by billionaire Elon Musk have filed complaints in recent months to denounce cases of sexual harassment or racial discrimination at the company.
Last October, a California jury ordered Tesla to pay $137 million in damages to a black former employee for turning a blind eye to the racism he suffered at one of the group’s factories.
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