Tesla sued by California civil rights agency, which alleges racist treatment of Black employees
A California civil rights agency sued Tesla this week, alleging racist harassment of and discrimination against Black workers that has persisted for years at the company's car assembly plant and other facilities in the state. The company warned it was facing this lawsuit in its annual financial filing Monday.
In its complaint, which became public on Thursday, California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing says it conducted a three-year-long investigation, and received hundreds of complaints from Tesla workers.
The agency says it found evidence that Tesla, among other things:
Kept Black workers in the lowest level roles in the company, and paid them less than White and other colleagues.
Denied Black workers training and promotions, and disciplined them more severely than others.
Assigned Black workers more physically demanding work within the company's factories.
Retaliated against Black workers who formally complained to human resources after supervisors and other colleagues used racist epithets to try to intimidate or degrade them.
Practically ignored complaints from Black workers who protested “the commonplace use of racial slurs on the assembly line.”
Moved unreasonably slowly to “clean up racist graffiti with swastikas and other hate symbols scrawled in common areas.”
The agency is asking the court to compel Tesla to end unequal treatment of Black employees and contractors, and to require Tesla to pay damages of an unspecified amount both to the DFEH and to workers who experienced this discrimination, essentially to make them whole, or to reinstate workers who were wrongly terminated.
Tesla put out a company blog post on Wednesday ahead of the lawsuit filing, in which they called it “misguided” and “a narrative spun by the DFEH and a handful of plaintiff firms to generate publicity.”
The DFEH suit focuses on Tesla's treatment of Black and/or African American people, but not Latino, Asian and other employees who have also sued the company in the state alleging racial discrimination.
There are no Black executives at Tesla, and only 3% of professionals at the company's Fremont car plant are Black, the DFEH alleges. However, 20% of the factory operatives at the company's Fremont vehicle assembly plant are Black. That means Black people are “severely under-represented” in higher paying roles with more influence in the company.
Tesla did not disclose this level of detail in its annual diversity reports.
The agency also accused Tesla of failing to comply with state laws that require companies to provide anti-harassment and anti-discrimination training to workers and to investigate and address complaints about all workers, including full-time, contractors and others.
“Tesla had no written procedures for coordinating investigations into racial harassment involving workers from staffing agencies and did not provide standardized training to supervisors on how to conduct investigations into racial harassment,” the DFEH wrote.
Tesla and the DFEH did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
加州一家民权机构本周起诉特斯拉，指控该公司的汽车装配厂和该州的其他设施多年来一直存在对黑人工人的种族主义骚扰和歧视。该公司在周一的年度财务申报中警告称，它正面临这起诉讼。 在周四公布的投诉中，加州公平就业和住房部表示，它进行了为期三年的调查，并收到了数百起来自特斯拉工人的投诉。
该机构表示，它发现了特斯拉的证据，其中包括：
让黑人工人在公司中担任最低级别的职位，他们的薪水低于白人和其他同事。
拒绝黑人工人的培训和晋升，并比其他人更严厉地惩戒他们。
分配给黑人工人在公司工厂内对体力要求更高的工作。
对在主管和其他同事使用种族主义绰号试图恐吓或贬低他们后正式向人力资源部投诉的黑人工人进行报复。
几乎无视黑人工人的抱怨，他们抗议“在装配线上普遍使用种族诽谤”。
不合理地缓慢移动以“清理公共区域潦草的卐字符和其他仇恨符号的种族主义涂鸦”。
该机构要求法院迫使特斯拉结束对黑人员工和承包商的不平等待遇，并要求特斯拉向 DFEH 和遭受这种歧视的工人支付未指明金额的损害赔偿金，主要是为了让他们完整，或恢复被错误解雇的工人。
特斯拉周三在提起诉讼之前发布了一篇公司博客文章，称其为“误导”和“由 DFEH 和少数原告公司为引起宣传而编造的故事”。
DFEH 诉讼的重点是特斯拉对黑人和/或非裔美国人的待遇，而不是拉丁裔、亚裔和其他也在该州起诉该公司并指控种族歧视的员工。
DFEH 声称，特斯拉没有黑人高管，该公司弗里蒙特汽车厂的专业人士中只有 3% 是黑人。然而，该公司弗里蒙特汽车装配厂 20% 的工厂操作员是黑人。这意味着黑人在高薪职位中的“代表性严重不足”，但对公司的影响力更大。
特斯拉没有在其年度多元化报告中披露这一级别的详细信息。
该机构还指责特斯拉没有遵守州法律，该法律要求公司向工人提供反骚扰和反歧视培训，并调查和解决对所有工人的投诉，包括全职工人、承包商和其他人。
DFEH 写道：“特斯拉没有书面程序来协调对涉及人事代理机构工人的种族骚扰的调查，也没有向主管提供关于如何对种族骚扰进行调查的标准化培训。”
特斯拉和 DFEH 没有立即回应置评请求。
