Black workers accused Tesla of racism for years. Now California is stepping in
For Black employees at Tesla’s flagship California plant, coming into work could mean being harassed, bullied by a supervisor or finding racist graffiti sprayed on factory walls.
That’s according to a new lawsuit filed by California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), which alleges that Black workers in the company’s Fremont factory experienced “rampant racism” that the company left “unchecked for years”.
In the suit, filed on 9 February in an Alameda county court in California, the agency says Black workers reported they were subjected to racist slurs and drawings and were assigned the most physically demanding jobs. “Workers referred to the factory as the ‘slaveship’ or ‘the plantation’, where defendants’ production leads ‘crack the whip’,” the agency said in the complaint.
“Tesla has continued to deflect and evade responsibility,” the lawsuit adds. “While it claims to not tolerate racial harassment or discrimination at its factories, Tesla’s investigations of complaints are not compliant with law.”
Allegations of racial discrimination at Tesla’s US facilities aren’t new. The company has been hit with several discrimination lawsuits from employees over similar allegations in recent years. But filed by a government agency, the new suit may have far wider implications.
“When a single worker sues Tesla, the company may be motivated to sweep the allegations under the rug. But here, the potential for actual, systemic change is much greater,” said Veena Dubal, labor law professor at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.
Tesla has called the lawsuit “misguided” in a public blog post, noting that it focuses on alleged misconduct that took place between 2015 and 2019, but that in more recent
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