Tesla is reportedly a hotbed of racial abuse — and the state of California has finally had enough.
According to The Los Angeles Times, the state of California has filed a lawsuit against the Elon Musk-led company. The lawsuit comes after more than 32 months of an investigation into the practices by the company, as well as countless worker complaints spanning more than 10 years against the organization.
The allegations against Tesla are what The Los Angeles Times is calling quite “horrific” — so much so, in fact, that many of the words that were allegedly used by the company cannot be reprinted here.
But what can be stated here is that Tesla allegedly made their Black workers “scrub floors on their hands and knees, and they were relegated to the Fremont, Calif., factory’s most difficult physical jobs,” per the Los Angeles Times.
What’s more, the suit alleges that Black workers were routinely denied promotions, were subjected to willful and malicious harassment, got paid far less than their white counterparts for performing the same job, and were disciplined for infractions that other workers got a pass for.
“Black workers make up 20% of Tesla’s factory assemblers, but there are no Black executives and just 3% of professionals at the Fremont plant are Black,” reads the suit.
Additionally, the California Civil Rights Law Group, a Bay Area firm, filed a class-action lawsuit against Tesla back in 2017. The firm filed the suit on behalf of more than 1,000 Black workers, and as of this writing, that suit is still pending.
Naturally, and as can be expected, Tesla flatly denies all of the claims made in the lawsuit, and has taken to their website to write an extensive post denying the claims.
“Attacking a company like Tesla that has done so much good for California should not be the overriding aim of a state agency with prosecutorial authority. The interests of workers and fundamental fairness must come first,” wrote the company, in part.
Tesla's History Of Racial Abuse Claims
As AfroTech has previously — and frequently — reported, Tesla has a history of racial abuse claims.
At the beginning of February 2022, a former employee sued the company for racial harassment after she was targeted for being Black and gay.
Prior to that, Tesla had to settle with a worker in October 2021 for creating a “racially hostile work environment.” That worker was awarded $130 million in damages.
And prior to that, Tesla settled with another worker back in August 2021 when the company failed to stop supervisors from calling him the N-word. That worker was awarded more than a million dollars in damages.
