Tesla has been ordered to pay $137 million in damages to a former Black employee who accused the corporate of turning a blind eye to discrimination and racial abuse on the firm’s EV plant in Fremont California, the Washington Post has reported. A San Francisco federal courtroom jury awarded the judgement — reportedly one of many largest in a person race discrimination employment case — to Owen Diaz, an elevator operator who labored as a contract worker in 2015 and 2016.
In the lawsuit, Diaz alleged that he confronted discrimination “straight from the Jim Crow era,” through which he was subjected to racial slurs. He alleged that Tesla staff left drawings of swastikas, racist graffiti and offensive cartoons across the plant, whereas supervisors uncared for to halt the abuse. “Tesla’s progressive image was a façade papering over its regressive, demeaning treatment of African-American employees,” in keeping with the lawsuit.
The jury awarded Diaz $6.9 million for emotional misery, however the majority, $130 million, was punitive damages towards Tesla. “It’s a great thing when one of the richest corporations in America has to have a reckoning of the abhorrent conditions at its factory for Black people,” stated the lawyer for Diaz, Lawrence Organ.
“It took 4 lengthy years to get so far,” Diaz instructed the New York Times. “It’s like a big weight has been pulled off my shoulders.”
In response to the decision, Tesla downplayed the allegations in a blog post written by human sources VP Valerie Capers Workman. “In addition to Mr. Diaz, three different witnesses (all non-Tesla contract staff) testified at trial that they usually heard racial slurs (together with the N-word) on the Fremont manufacturing facility ground,” she wrote. “While they all agreed that the use of the N-word was not appropriate in the workplace, they also agreed that most of the time they thought the language was used in a ‘friendly’ manner and usually by African-American colleagues.”
Tesla added that it was conscious of Mr. Diaz’s complaints, firing two contractors and suspending one other. She stated that whereas the info did not justify the decision, the corporate was “not perfect” in 2015 and 2016, “but we have come a long way.” The firm has but to say whether or not it plans to attraction.
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