Tesla may face a class-action lawsuit after 240 black California factory workers described rampant racism and discrimination at the electric-car maker’s San Francisco Bay Area plant, including frequent racial slurs and references to the manufacturing site as a plantation or slave ship.
The statements, filed Monday in Alameda County Superior Court, come from contractors and employees who worked at the factory’s production floor in Fremont, about 40 miles southeast of San Francisco. The vast majority worked at the site between 2016 and today.
Attorneys suing Tesla, Inc. say class action status is being sought and estimate at least 6,000 workers could be part of the class.
The individual testimonies are part of a 2017 lawsuit filed by Marcus Vaughn, who wrote to human resources and Tesla CEO Elon Musk complaining about a hostile work environment in which he was labeled an insult by colleagues and supervisors. No investigation was opened and he was fired because, according to his lawyers, he “didn’t have a positive attitude”.
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In April, a federal jury awarded another former Tesla employee $3.2 million for racial abuse. Owen Diaz claimed that during his approximately nine-month tenure at Tesla, which ended in 2016, he was called the “N-word” more than 30 times, shown racist cartoons, and urged to “go back to Africa.”
Bryan Schwartz, one of Vaughn’s attorneys, said the case dragged on for years as Tesla attempted to force the lawsuit into arbitration. Instead, in April, the California Supreme Court allowed black workers to seek a public injunction in court that would require Tesla to change its work environment.
“It is abhorrent to have such levels of egregious harassment here in Silicon Valley,” Schwartz said, adding that it was shocking that “Tesla has allowed this type of pervasive harassment to go on for so long.”
Tesla’s attorneys did not respond to emailed requests for comment.
All of the applicants said they had heard a specific racial slur used, with more than half saying they had heard supervisors and managers use the word, a statement summarizing the statements said.
Dozens also said supervisors used the racial slur against them, the summary said, and nearly half said they experienced or saw other black workers being tasked with more physically demanding work and being disciplined more frequently.
Production worker Albert Blakes said in his statement that it was difficult to go to work knowing he would be faced with racial slurs, references to slavery and offensive graffiti for 12 hours. He said he filed a verbal complaint with HR in late 2021 but never received a response and nothing has changed.
“Something must be done to hold Tesla accountable for the racism at the Fremont factory and send a signal that this racism will not be tolerated in California workplaces,” he said.
The Fremont facility is the subject of several lawsuits alleging racism, harassment and discrimination.
Among them: a wide-ranging racial discrimination case filed by California regulators last year.
The lawsuit, filed by the California Department of Civil Rights (formerly known as the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing), alleges that Tesla “turned a blind eye” to widespread abuses, which included comparing black employees to slaves and monkeys.
Tesla has firmly denied the allegations made in state court and countered by accusing the agency of abusing its authority.
Musk, Tesla’s CEO and largest shareholder, relocated the company from Silicon Valley to Austin in 2021, in part due to tensions with various California authorities over practices at the Fremont factory.
Despite the dispute, Musk announced in February, with California Gov. Gavin Newsom at his side, that an office complex in Palo Alto would be Tesla’s tech hub.