A vehicle passes through the Tesla Inc. assembly plant in Fremont, California, U.S., Monday, May 11, 2020.
David Paul Morris | David Paul Morris Bloomberg | Getty Images
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) files lawsuit Tesla Elon Musk’s electric car maker violated federal law by accusing it of “tolerating widespread and ongoing racial harassment by black employees and subjecting some of those workers to retaliation for speaking out against the harassment.”
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The federal agency charged with enforcing civil rights laws and combating workplace discrimination announced it would file a lawsuit against Tesla on Thursday.
The EEOC said in its complaint that Tesla’s non-Black violators “publicly spread slurs and insults” on the vehicle production line or in surrounding high-traffic work areas. Supervisors and managers allegedly witnessed racially offensive behavior but failed or refused to intercede.
When black Tesla employees reported “slurs, insults, graffiti and inappropriate behavior” to Tesla’s human resources department, employee relations team or other managers, the agency said Tesla failed and refused to take steps to address them Behavior.
Tesla was previously sued by a state civil rights agency in California over related charges. A jury also previously ordered Tesla to pay approximately $3.2 million in damages to Owen Diaz, a black former worker, after the company found that he suffered racial discrimination while working at Tesla in 2015.
Last year, a financial filing Tesla revealed that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has issued the results of an investigation into the company. Tesla has since entered into a mandatory mediation process with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the filing said. The mediation process was unsuccessful, leading to the announcement of the lawsuit Thursday.
According to a statement from the federal agency to CNBC, the EEOC is seeking “compensatory and punitive damages, as well as back wages for affected workers, as well as injunctive relief aimed at reforming Tesla’s employment practices to prevent future incidents of this nature.” Discrimination.”
The lawsuit (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Tesla Inc., Case No. 4:23-cv-04984) has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Read the lawsuit below:
Svlook
