240 Black factory workers in California have accused Tesla San Francisco Bay Area facility of racism and discrimination, potentially opening the business up to a class-action lawsuit.
The workers detailed instances of frequent racial slurs and derogatory references to the factory as a plantation or slave ship.
Tesla, Inc. Class-Action Lawsuit Overview
On Monday, in the Alameda County Superior Court, testimonies were given by contractors and employees who worked on the factory production floor in Fremont, situated around 40 miles (65 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco.
The majority of these individuals worked at the site between 2016 and the present. The legal team representing the plaintiffs suing Tesla, Inc. estimates that at least 6,000 workers could be included in the class-action lawsuit.
These individual testimonies are a component of a lawsuit initiated in 2017 by Marcus Vaughn, who formally reported incidents of a hostile work environment characterized by derogatory slurs directed towards him by his co-workers and supervisors. Despite his communication to human resources and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, no investigation was conducted, and he was terminated for allegedly lacking a positive attitude, according to his legal representatives.
Read more: China Economic Slump And Its Repercussions For The US
Allegations of Pervasive Mistreatment in Silicon Valley
This specific lawsuit is among a series of legal cases that accuse the Fremont plant of racism, harassment, and discrimination. In the previous year, California regulators filed a lawsuit against Tesla in state court, accusing the company of turning a blind eye to the mistreatment and claiming that Musk instructed workers to tolerate racial harassment.
In April, a federal jury awarded a former Tesla employee $3.2 million in damages for the racial abuse he endured.
However, the California Supreme Court granted Black workers the ability to seek a public injunction in court to mandate Tesla rectify its work environment. Schwartz remarked that having such extensive and appalling harassment taking place in Silicon Valley is repugnant, and it is shocking that Tesla has allowed this pervasive mistreatment to persist.
Requests for comments sent via email to Tesla’s legal representatives were unanswered.
The declarations provided by all the individuals affirm that they encountered the use of a specific racial slur, with over half of them stating that they heard supervisors and managers employing that term.
According to a summary of the statements, numerous declarants also indicated that higher-ranking individuals directed the racial slur towards them, and nearly half reported witnessing or experiencing situations where other Black workers were assigned physically demanding tasks and subjected to discipline more frequently.
Read more: Unveiling The Extraordinary: Crocodiles Found Capable Of Virgin Birth For The First Time
