California Civil Rights agency has sued Tesla, alleging the electric car maker has been discriminating against Black employees at the San Francisco Bay Area factory where many vehicles of the firm are made. It received many complaints from the Tesla workers. The agency has focused on the point that Tesla kept Black employees in lower-level roles at the company by assigning them more physically demanding work.
California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing mentions that it conducted a three-year-long investigation, and received hundreds of complaints from Tesla Workers.
The agency mentions that it has found evidence that Tesla has been keeping Black workers devoid of their actual rights by paying them less than White and other colleagues. Moreover, it has denied training and promotions of the Black workers. They have assigned Black workers more physically demanding work within the company’s factories. Moreover, they have practically ignored the complaints from Black workers who protested “the commonplace use of racial slurs on the assembly line.
The agency is asking the court to compel Tesla to end such unequal treatment of Black employees and contractors and to require Tesla to pay the damages of an unspecified amount both to the DFEH and to the workers who have faced this discrimination.
The DFEH suit involves Tesla’s treatment of Black people, but not Liano, Asians, and other employees who have also sued the firm in the state alleging racial discrimination. The company’s Fremont car plant involves only 3% of professionals from Black people. 20% of the factory operatives at the company’s Fremont vehicle assembly plant are Black. Tesla did not disclose this level of detail in its annual diversity report.
Tesla was accused of failing to comply with state laws as well. These laws require companies to offer anti-harassment and anti-discrimination training to workers and to investigate the complaints about all workers.
“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.