Describing a “hostile” workplace rife with racial slurs and pervasive discrimination, California’s civil rights regulator is suing Tesla for “severe” racism against Black workers at its Fremont factory near San Francisco.
Responding to complaints from “hundreds of workers,” writes Bloomberg, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) said in statement released earlier in February that it had “found evidence that Tesla’s Fremont factory is a racially segregated workplace where Black workers are subjected to racial slurs and discriminated against in job assignments, discipline, pay, and promotion, creating a hostile work environment.”
Citing the testimony of one worker who said they heard racial slurs “as often as 50 to 100 times a day,” the DFEH said supervisors and managers either did nothing or were active participants in the demeaning language.
Every surface in the factory—from washroom walls and lockers, to work stations and lunch tables—was covered in racist graffiti, according to the DFEH.
Headed by billionaire and extreme libertarian Elon Musk, last seen tweeting support for the insurrectionist convoy in Ottawa, Canada and comparing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler, Tesla “has faced numerous complaints and lawsuits from former workers at its Fremont plant about racial discrimination and sexual harassment in recent years,” writes Bloomberg. Many of those complaints “never make it to court because Tesla’s full-time employees sign agreements requiring workplace disputes to be handled in closed-door arbitration.”
“For many Black and/or African American workers,” the DFEH added, “the stress from the severe and pervasive racial harassment, the risk of a physical altercation and escalation with harassers, the blatant discrimination, the disproportionately severe discipline, and the futility of complaining, made the working conditions so intolerable that they resigned.”
