Former employees claim they were subjected to racial slurs and offensive behavior while working at the automaker’s facilities.
Fifteen Black former or current Tesla employees on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the electric car company on the grounds of racial abuse and harassment at its factories.
The workers mentioned on how they were exposed to offensive racist comments and behavior regularly by managers, colleagues and human resources employees, as per the lawsuit filed in a California state court.
The harassment case included using slurs like “nigger,” “slavery,” or “plantation” or making sexual comments like “likes booty,” as per the lawsuit, which also stated that Tesla’s “standard operating procedures involve open, blatant, and unmitigated race discrimination.”
According to the lawsuit, a few of the appellants were delegated to some of the most physically demanding positions at Tesla or were passed racial over for promotion.
At least ten lawsuits have been filed against the automaker, accusing widespread race discrimination or sexual harassment, and even one filed by a California civil rights agency.
It has previously denied any wrongdoing and claims to have regulations to avoid and resolve workplace misconduct.
After turning down a $15 million award, a federal judge in California bought the new trial on the damage done to Tesla attributes to a Black former worker who alleged the company of race discrimination.
This month, a Tesla shareholder sued CEO Elon Musk and the company’s board of directors, accusing them of ignoring worker claims and fostering a toxic workplace culture.
“Tesla has created a toxic workplace culture based on racist and derogatory harmful practices against its employees,” said the investor Solomon Chau.
“This harmful work environment must have gestated internally for years, and the truth about Tesla’s culture has only recently surfaced,” he added in the complaint.
“Tesla’s toxic workplace has resulted in financial losses and irreparable harm to the company image.”
Tesla has stated that it would not endure discriminatory practices and has obtained steps to address employee complaints.
The lawsuit accuses the defendants – Musk, 11 Tesla board members, and the company – of failing to address and remedy red flags regarding internal findings of discrimination and harassment.
According to the lawsuit, this induced Tesla to lose high-quality workers and result in additional charges for attempting to defend cases and settling fines for violations.
The week after the former elevator user, Owen Diaz, said he would not accept the judge’s award, U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco conferred Tesla’s motion for a new trial.
Diaz was awarded $137 million by a jury last October, one of the biggest verdicts ever in a discrimination case involving a single worker. Orrick ruled in April that Tesla was liable to Diaz for discrimination, but he reduced the award to $15 million because it was excessive.
Diaz’s attorneys claimed last week that the lower award was unjust because it violated his constitutional right to a jury trial.
Tesla did not respond immediately to seeking comment.
“We are optimistic that a truly innovative jury will be seeing the indications favorably to the very first jury and that Mr Diaz would get the equality that the judicial process is supposed to provide,” said Diaz’s lawyer, Lawrence Organ.
Orrick did not set a new trial date but did schedule a convention for July 12.
Diaz claimed in his 2017 lawsuit that his coworkers and a superintendent at Tesla’s Fremont, California, assembly plant exposed him to a hostile work environment filled with racist slurs, caricatures, and swastikas.
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