Last week, former Tesla employee Kaylen Barker filed a lawsuit against the electric carmaker for allegedly disregarding her complaints of racial discrimination, saying that “being a Black worker at a Tesla’s renowned California factory, is to be forced to step back in time and suffer painful abuses reminiscent of the Jim Crow Era.”
The 25-year-old, who is Black and gay, claims a white coworker at the company’s Lathrop plant called her the N-word and assaulted her with a hot grinding tool. After Barker complained to human resources, Tesla allegedly retaliated by withholding her wages.
Barker’s civil suit is one of multiple cases in recent months to paint a disturbing picture of a hostile work environment for women and people of color at the clean-energy giant’s factories. And it comes a mere four months after a jury awarded another former employee, Owen Diaz, nearly $137 million over racism he encountered in the workplace which included coworkers hurling racial epithets and telling him to “go back to Africa.”
Now Tesla is facing a civil rights complaint from California regulators over employees’ accusations of pervasive racial discrimination. Last month, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) issued “a Notice of Cause Finding and Mandatory Dispute Resolution following an investigation into undisclosed allegations of race discrimination and harassment at unspecified Tesla locations,” according to the company’s annual report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The agency “gave notice that, based upon the evidence collected, it believes that it has grounds to file a civil complaint against Tesla,” the filing stated.
On Wednesday, DFEH filed a lawsuit against Tesla alleging systemic racial discrimination and harassment at the electric automaker’s facilities. The agency’s director said it received “hundreds of complaints from workers” and uncovered evidence that Tesla’s Fremont plant “is a racially segregated workplace where Black workers are subjected to racial slurs and discriminated against in job assignments, discipline, pay, and promotion.”
As for Diaz’s multimillion-dollar case, Tesla’s report said “the Company does not believe that the facts and law justify the verdict” and that it has requested a retrial or reduction in the jury’s award.
Tesla’s report also noted that it received an SEC subpoena last November requesting information on how billionaire CEO Elon Musk was complying with a 2018 settlement with the...