California agency accuses Tesla of racial segregation at factory

A California agency filed a racial discrimination complaint against Tesla on Wednesday, accusing the electric carmaker of segregating Black employees at its factory in the US state.

The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) “found evidence that Tesla’s Fremont factory is a racially segregated workplace where Black workers are subjected to racial slurs and discriminated against in job assignments, discipline, pay, and promotion,” said Kevin Kish, the agency’s director, in a statement.

Black workers at the factory were regularly subjected to deeply offensive racial slurs and jokes by co-workers and managers, the complaint said. Kish said the agency received hundreds of complaints from workers at the plant.

“The facts on this case speak for themselves,” he said.

Ahead of the filing, Tesla had released a statement Wednesday saying it “opposes all forms of discrimination and harassment” and that it is committed to providing “a workplace that is safe, respectful, fair and inclusive.”

But excerpts of the complaint, released by the agency and filed in a California court late Wednesday, paint a very different picture.

The agency said non-Black workers would regularly refer to areas where many Black or African-American workers were stationed with racist historical names, including “the plantation”.

Black slaves were frequently set to work on agricultural plantations in North America before the mid-19th century producing crops including sugar and cotton.

Workers at the Tesla factory would commonly be “taunted by racial slurs and then baited into verbal and physical confrontations” by non-Black workers and would subsequently face disciplinary action, the complaint said.

Non-Black workers were frequently given preferential treatment at the plant, according to the filing, including being handed easier jobs and given greater leniency in disciplinary proceedings compared to their Black colleagues.

‘Harassment’

The United States has a deeply troubled history with racism, slavery and racial injustice and protests in recent years have seen millions confront that legacy after several high-profile police killings of African-Americans.

Accounts of systemic racial discrimination in US workplaces have become more common after Black Lives Matter protests hit full swing in 2020.

The details in the DFEH complaint are particularly shocking because of how widespread the culture of racial abuse is alleged to have been at the Fremont factory.

One worker “heard these racial slurs as often as 50-100 times a day” and workers with racially incendiary tattoos of the Confederate flag would make them visible to intimidate Black employees, the DFEH said.

Another worker “observed ‘hang N[]’ penned next to a drawing of a noose” in a factory toilet.

Other racist graffiti included Nazi swastikas, “N[]”, “KKK” in reference to the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan, and “go back to Africa”.

Racist language directed at Black workers included “porch monkey” and jokes saying they were “out of the hood” and “from the ghetto.”

“The stress from the severe and pervasive racial harassment, the risk of a physical altercation and escalation with harassers, the blatant discrimination, the disproportionately severe discipline, and the futility of complaining, made the working conditions so intolerable that they resigned,” the complaint said.

The company, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, has been hit with several lawsuits alleging discrimination at the California factory in recent months.

“Tesla has always taken disciplinary action and terminated employees for professional misconduct, including those who utter racial slurs or harass others in various ways,” the company said in its statement Wednesday.

In December, six women sued the company, alleging a culture of sexual harassment at the plant and other facilities.

The suit came after a California jury ruled in October that Tesla should pay a Black ex-employee $137 million in damages for turning a blind eye to racism the man encountered at the Fremont plant.

Last year, Musk feuded with authorities over the re-opening of the factory amid coronavirus restrictions and threatened to move his headquarters out of the state.

Subsequently, Musk told investors in October that the leading electric vehicle maker is relocating its headquarters to Texas, where it is building a plant.

© 2022 AFP