Tesla Inc. found itself in hot water after the state of California sued them on Wednesday, February 9, over allegations of racial discrimination and harassment of Black employees at the company's San Francisco Bay area factory, as per a report on Manufacturing.net.
According to Kevin Kish, the head of California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), the lawsuit filed against Tesla in Alameda County Superior Court was sparked by hundreds of complaints from its workers.
Kish issued a statement regarding the suit, saying that his department found evidence that Tesla's factory in Fremont, California is a racially segregated workplace where Black workers are subjected to racial slurs by fellow employees and discriminated against in terms of discipline, pay, promotion, and job assignments. These factors create a hostile work environment.
The lawsuit's details have yet to be released, and Tesla did not immediately respond to the suit filed against them. California suing them was not a complete surprise as the world's leading electric carmaker had warned of this possibility in Tesla's annual filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission just days earlier.
Tesla did post a blog entry on its website entitled "The DFEH's Misguided Lawsuit" before the filing of the case. Tesla called California's lawsuit misguided and said that the DFEH did not raise any concern about its workplace practices in Fremont following the agency's three-year investigation.
According to the blog post, the lawsuit appears to focus on alleged misconduct by Tesla production associates at the Fremont factory between 2015 and 2019. Tesla denies the agency's accusation, saying that the company "strongly opposes all forms of discrimination and harassment and has a dedicated Employee Relations team that responds to and investigates all complaints."
The blog entry emphasizes that on every single occasion that DFEH closed an investigation regarding racial discrimination and harassment at Tesla's Fremont factory over the past five years, the agency did not find misconduct against them. Tesla said that it strains the credibility of the DFEH that the agency now alleges that systematic racial discrimination and harassment somehow existed at the company after investigating for three years.
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Tesla said in the posting that it "will be asking the court to pause the case and take other steps to ensure that facts and evidence will be heard" once the suit has been filed. Tesla concluded its blog entry by saying that attacking the company that has done so much good for California should not be the overriding aim of the DFEH.
The lawsuit comes just months after a San Francisco jury awarded nearly $137 million to a former Black contract worker of Tesla who said he encountered "daily racist epithets," including the "N-word," at the Fremont plant back in 2015 and 2016 before quitting his job. According to The Verge, Tesla is still appealing that verdict, with the company denying any knowledge of racist conduct that Owen Diaz said took place at the Fremont plant, which employs around 10,000 workers.
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