Silicon Valley Business Journal
Luxury electric carmaker Tesla is facing another lawsuit over claims that its workplace is rife with racist behavior.
In the latest, a former Tesla factory worker who was hired in April claims that employees and supervisors regularly used the “N word” around him. He says he reported the behavior in writing to human resources, and was ultimately fired in late October for “not having a positive attitude,” Bloomberg reports.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in Alameda County Superior Court, is the third Tesla’s faced this year from minority employees who say they faced racist behavior at work. The lawsuit includes an email CEO Elon Musk sent to factory employees in late May that the employee, Marcus Vaughn, felt was directed at employees like him.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in Alameda County Superior Court, is the third Tesla’s faced this year from minority employees who say they faced racist behavior at work. The lawsuit includes an email CEO Elon Musk sent to factory employees in late May that the employee, Marcus Vaughn, felt was directed at employees like him.
“Part of not being a huge jerk is considering how someone might feel who is part of [a] historically less represented group,” Musk wrote, according to the lawsuit. “Sometimes these things happen unintentionally, in which case you should apologize. In fairness, if someone is a jerk to you, but sincerely apologizes, it is important to be thick-skinned and accept that apology.”
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
at the forefront of the electric car revolution, its standard operating procedure at the Tesla factory is pre-Civil Rights-era race discrimination,” Vaughn’s lawyer, Larry Organ, wrote in the complaint.
Organ filed two other racial discrimination lawsuits this year against Tesla on behalf of factory workers. The first, filed in March, came from a black factory worker who claimed his coworkers and supervisors regularly used the “N word” and stole his phone to record a violent rap saying they’d like to kill him and ship his body parts back to his family. That case was sent to arbitration in August.
Last month, Organ filed a complaint on behalf of three Tesla contractors who claimed coworkers used racial epithets around them at work. In recent months, Tesla has faced separate lawsuits claiming the company discriminated against women and LGBTQ employees.