43 ms·

Tesla must pay $137M to ex-worker over hostile work environment, racism

138 points by darthvoldemort 5y ago

wilsonfiifi 5y ago
> colleagues used epithets to denigrate him and other Black workers, told him to "go back to Africa" Which is a bit ironic considering Musk himself was born in South Africa.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Broken_Hippo 5y ago
  Obviously, this wasn't based on country of origin but rather, the color of someone's skin and racist stereotypes about Africans of all nationalities. It doesn't matter where Musk is from in this scenario.
  - simondotau 5y ago
    That's what makes it ironic. Because had the person(s) lobbing the insult followed their org chart to the very top, would find Elon Musk, a person who literally came from "Africa". Imagine if some middle manager at the Toyota plant in Indiana was racist towards an Asian American shift worker, telling them to "go back to Japan!" It's that level of unimaginable stupidity. While I don't question the veracity of the claims, it's genuinely difficult for me to believe that that kind of cartoonish racism still exists, especially in California.
    - aaron695 5y ago
      > While I don't question the veracity of the claims, it's genuinely difficult for me to believe that that kind of cartoonish racism still exists, especially in California. You should think long and hard about this comment. You should not believe a random person over yourself. Especially when they are in court for anything. By that stage they are commited. Certainly not when they are in it to win 100 million. It is good to think about if they might be correct and yourself wrong.
trabant00 5y ago
Nobody wants to touch this story with a comment in 3 hours? I wonder why. I'll go ahead and say that if no important detail is left out of the story, 137 millions being awarded for verbal abuse during 1 year of employment is insane and clearly shows why the company has mandatory arbitration agreements.
- yosito 5y ago
  [deleted because no one seems capable of having a good faith discussion about this]
  - josefx 5y ago
    > verbal abuse and bathroom grafiti, which most of us developed thick skin Tesla claims to have a zero tolerance policy in place, so that excuse doesn't work for long term harassment. They basically admitted to a complete enforcement failure of their own policies. So the question is if Teslas management is that incompetent or racist and why their meme lord in charge hasn't done anything to fix the issue (outside of forced arbitration to silence workers).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - h0l0cube 5y ago
    > bathroom grafiti, which most of us developed thick skin against by our late teens You'd expect to see this at a public toilet, etched into school furniture, or at the urinal at a dive bar, but this has a totally different vibe in a workplace where everyone is being paid to be there, and colleagues need to trust each other. The 137 million payout does seem extreme, but it's probably just adequate to incentivize a company with the turnover of Tesla to improve its policies (and outcomes).
    - aaomidi 5y ago
      I'm tired of people expecting me to just take it when it comes to racism. No. You're going to fuck around and find out. As did Tesla. Don't expect me to develop a thick skin. The person paying $137 mil can do that.
throwaway4good 5y ago
Americans and their silly "justice system".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
zivkovicp 5y ago
$137M, what a joke. I'm sure he'd been able to earn at least 2x that amount had he continued his employment.
- gryn 5y ago
  I think you are confusing M as in thousand and M as Million.
potamic 5y ago
> faced a hostile work environment in which, he told the court, colleagues used epithets to denigrate him and other Black workers, told him to “go back to Africa” and left racist graffiti in the restrooms and a racist drawing in his workspace. How do you even prove such a thing? Especially 5 years after you have left the place. And how does it not become a case of he said, she said?
- erfgh 5y ago
  There are witnesses and the jury evaluates them.
  - pranavjoneja 5y ago
    This is a civil case. Juries are only for criminal cases.
    - IdoRA 5y ago
      Juries are common in civil trials in the US.
    - TheCoelacanth 5y ago
      > In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. 7th amendment says otherwise.
  - mrjangles 5y ago
    The relevant section from the article >“In addition to Mr. Diaz, three other witnesses (all non-Tesla contract employees) testified at trial that they regularly heard racial slurs (including the n-word) on the Fremont factory floor. While they all agreed that the use of the n-word was not appropriate in the workplace, they also agreed that most of the time they thought the language was used in a ‘friendly’ manner and usually by African-American colleagues.”
Crack12 5y ago
I have a plan: You and me both get hired there, then you yell racist stuff at me, then I sue the company, then we split the $137M. edit: we can switch roles if you prefer
- vkou 5y ago
  In a company run by adults, your manager would discipline one of you, and the story would end there.
  - eyeball 5y ago
    One of them just needs to become the manager.
    - vkou 5y ago
      You're going to need another person to become the HR rep that gets your case assigned, too, and probably that rep's manager/whomever handles appeals, as well as the manager & HR rep dealing with the cases that any concerned co-workers will raise, as well as everyone else who was involved that established a company-spanning pattern of harassment that nobody did anything about. An absolutely trivial conspiracy to pull off, especially given that the median payout for this is closer to ~zero dollars, and most likely, a ruined career for everyone involved, and federal prison time, if any of this is sussed out. Maybe the Donald will give you a pardon once he returns to the presidency, on July 4th, 2023, or whenever. Feel free to give it a shot, and let us know how it turns out. Meanwhile, I'm a bit busy conspiring with my buddy to become the CEO and the CFO of Tesla, respectively, so that we can take all it's money and fly to the Bahamas.
  - tartoran 5y ago
    I wouldn’t be so sure that adults is enough to stop grifters as grifters are adults too, they have different goals and quite often they reach them.
  - mizzack 5y ago
    Easy, we'll just give the manager a cut.
piokoch 5y ago
For me this is the most shocking: " the case was only able to move forward because Diaz had not signed one of Tesla’s mandatory arbitration agreements which the company uses to force employees to resolve disputes without a public trial" I think this is something very US-specific that is it legal to have an agreement that someone gives up basic citizen right like going to court and the right to have a public trial. In most countries something like this is just an abusive clause in the contract and is invalid automatically.
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  It is quite a normal thing in subcontracting.
  - fwsgonzo 5y ago
    It should be extremely illegal and looked down upon.
- trabant00 5y ago
  Actually we have this practice in Europe too and it is legal. Do note it is for civil disputes only.
  - coretx 5y ago
    Eh, not exactly. Altough you are supposed to try and resolve without going to court by law ( rendering such a clause redundant ), you ( natural person ) can not wave certain rights such as for example the right to go to court and have justice...
  - BBC-vs-neolibs 5y ago
    But in many cases the contract as written is very over-reaching. In many European rights, the language of the contracts sign away rights which can not be signed away.
- 101_101 5y ago
  Wait till you hear about how they treat amazon warehouse workers. But AWS is pretty cool huh? lol
vemv 5y ago
$137M very obviously incentivates people to engage into frivolous litigation. Only a fraction of that money should be awarded to the victim. The rest could as well go to charity, or our public health system, etc.
- nuerow 5y ago
  > $137M very obviously incentivates people to engage into frivolous litigation. The risk of frivolous litigation does not even register as a problem. The amount a company pays in damages is a factor of the corporation's size, and a consequence of what it takes to actually make them fix a systemic problem so that no one has to live with it. Otherwise, corporations could foster extremely toxic work environment and company cultures and any consequence would be written off as an operational cost. Also, mega corporations like Tesla do have their own dedicated HR and legal departments, so I'm sure they can handle an occasional court case.
  - cutemonster 5y ago
    @vemv didn't say the fines were too high. S/he said that: "The rest could as well go to charity, or our public health system". What's a single person going to do with $100M. It would have been enough for a bunch of schools
1cvmask 5y ago
Anyone here know the law well? Would Tesla be open to lawsuits if they fired African-American colleagues who used racial slurs (including the n- word) in a "friendly" manner? From the article: “In addition to Mr. Diaz, three other witnesses (all non-Tesla contract employees) testified at trial that they regularly heard racial slurs (including the n-word) on the Fremont factory floor. While they all agreed that the use of the n-word was not appropriate in the workplace, they also agreed that most of the time they thought the language was used in a ‘friendly’ manner and usually by African-American colleagues.”
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- arp242 5y ago
  Context is always important. "Haha, you're such a fucking asshole" is not the same as "YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!" either. It's hard to really judge the context from here; none of us were there, and I didn't read the full court report either (as most of us haven't). In another article Diaz said "some days I would just sit on my stairs and cry" so I'm gonna guess the context wasn't particularly friendly. It's still possible that there was a mismatch in how it was intended: the offenders intended it in a friendly way, but that's not how it was taken. It can happen to the best of us sometimes. One mistake is one mistake and can happen, but to be honest you need to be pretty darn tone-deaf to not notice that someone is uncomfortable from someone's response in both verbal and non-verbal clues, or a bit of an asshole to choose to ignore this. All in all, based on the reporting I find the "it was intended in a friendly manner" rather unconvincing, even when we give people the benefit of the doubt. Was it truly "racist"? I don't know; I'll withhold that judgement. But at the very least it strikes me as insensitive and unkind.
KronisLV 5y ago
Honest question: tossing morals and ethics aside, how long will it be before the employees of the large corporations actively look for ways to sue them to get as much money in compensations as possible? After all, even if such actions would get you blacklisted by many corporations, regardless of whether you were in the right ethically to take them to court vs just nitpicking, $137M feels like enough money to never have to work again. Seems like that would be a measured risk that some people could be willing to take. Personally, if i found my working conditions inadequate, i'd just leave and look for different opportunities because to a relatively low paid people like myself getting on any sort of a blacklist or getting negative publicity would be career ending, i probably could not afford court expenses or the mental toll something like that would take, and just generally am not a person who'd want to sue others and stir trouble (like many people, i'd assume), but what other reasons are there for people to look at employment and lawsuits as an unethical "get rich quick" scheme? Disclaimer: don't assume that i condone any of the above or would like to see a world in which abusive behaviour cannot rightfully be settled in court. However, I'm curious about the mechanisms in place to prevent the exploitation of the court system. This is especially relevant because of patent trolling and insurance fraud in certain countries.
EastOfTruth 5y ago
The families of those wrongfully killed by police get a lot less then that, $137M is just nuts.
Andy_G11 5y ago
I am sure that the abuse stopped him from rising to the top - a key requirement for an elevator operator. Sadly, his victory will no doubt lead to fewer low paid roles in big firms as CEOs will not like it that even the littlest man or woman can hold behemoths to account: a big motivator for automation.
reureu 5y ago
Previously, a black employee went through mandatory arbitration with Tesla, and the arbiter found it was ok for white employees to call black employees the n-word because it's used in rap music. Some may feel the $137M award to be a lot, but Tesla has been getting away with inaction for years. Maybe that will actually make them perk up and do something. > an arbitrator hired by Tesla to resolve the case in a series of closed-door hearings agreed the slurs weren't racist. Rather, they were "consistent with lyrics and images commonly found in rap songs and freestyle rap competitions," retired Marin County Judge Lynn Duryee wrote in a decision reviewed by Protocol. In a footnote, Duryee cited lyrics on genius.com for a song by Insanity, a little-known Canadian rapper. https://www.protocol.com/tesla-racism-claims-arbitration https://www.protocol.com/tesla-racism-claims-arbitration
throw149102 5y ago
It's strange - considering what I've heard about lottery winners, that 137 million will probably ruin that guys life. Most people can't survive something like that.
tatrajim 5y ago
Statement by Tesla, including relevant claims not in the CNBC article. - Mr. Diaz never worked for Tesla. He was a contract employee who worked for Citistaff. - Mr. Diaz worked as an elevator operator at the Fremont factory for nine months, from June 2015 to March 2016. - In addition to Mr. Diaz, three other witnesses (all non-Tesla contract employees) testified at trial that they regularly heard racial slurs (including the n-word) on the Fremont factory floor. While they all agreed that the use of the n-word was not appropriate in the workplace, they also agreed that most of the time they thought the language was used in a “friendly” manner and usually by African-American colleagues. They also told the jury about racist graffiti in the bathrooms, which was removed by our janitorial staff; - There was no witness testimony or other evidence that anyone ever heard the n-word used toward Mr. Diaz. - Mr. Diaz made written complaints to his non-Tesla supervisors. Those were well-documented in the nine months he worked at our factory. But he didn’t make any complaints about the n-word until after he was not hired full-time by Tesla – and after he hired an attorney. - The three times that Mr. Diaz did complain about harassment, Tesla stepped in and made sure responsive and timely action was taken by the staffing agencies: two contractors were fired and one was suspended (who had drawn a racially offensive cartoon). Mr. Diaz himself testified that he was “very satisfied” with the results of one of the investigations, and he agreed that there was follow-up on each of his complaints. - Even though Mr. Diaz now complains about racial harassment at Fremont, at the time he said he was being harassed, he recommended to his son and daughter – while they were all living together in the same home – that they work at Tesla with him. https://www.tesla.com/blog/regarding-todays-jury-verdict https://www.tesla.com/blog/regarding-todays-jury-verdict
- stevespang 5y ago
  This verdict will very likely be reduced considerably on appeal - - as most are . . .
kaminar 5y ago
What a crock...he was probably looking to get $100k
siwatanejo 5y ago
Most people saying that 137 is too much get responded with "this the only way Tesla can learn". Sure, I agree with that, but is 100% of the fine being awarded to the victim? That doesn't look right, it makes it a honeypot (incentive) for future trials. Even one tenth of that would be too high for a work issue that lasted one 1 year, why make the victim rich (and his decendants)? Compensation doesn't mean windfall/lottery.

> colleagues used epithets to denigrate him and other Black workers, told him to "go back to Africa" Which is a bit ironic considering Musk himself was born in South Africa.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Broken_Hippo 5y ago
Obviously, this wasn't based on country of origin but rather, the color of someone's skin and racist stereotypes about Africans of all nationalities. It doesn't matter where Musk is from in this scenario.
- simondotau 5y ago
  That's what makes it ironic. Because had the person(s) lobbing the insult followed their org chart to the very top, would find Elon Musk, a person who literally came from "Africa". Imagine if some middle manager at the Toyota plant in Indiana was racist towards an Asian American shift worker, telling them to "go back to Japan!" It's that level of unimaginable stupidity. While I don't question the veracity of the claims, it's genuinely difficult for me to believe that that kind of cartoonish racism still exists, especially in California.
  - aaron695 5y ago
    > While I don't question the veracity of the claims, it's genuinely difficult for me to believe that that kind of cartoonish racism still exists, especially in California. You should think long and hard about this comment. You should not believe a random person over yourself. Especially when they are in court for anything. By that stage they are commited. Certainly not when they are in it to win 100 million. It is good to think about if they might be correct and yourself wrong.

trabant00 5y ago

Nobody wants to touch this story with a comment in 3 hours? I wonder why. I'll go ahead and say that if no important detail is left out of the story, 137 millions being awarded for verbal abuse during 1 year of employment is insane and clearly shows why the company has mandatory arbitration agreements.

yosito 5y ago
[deleted because no one seems capable of having a good faith discussion about this]
- josefx 5y ago
  > verbal abuse and bathroom grafiti, which most of us developed thick skin Tesla claims to have a zero tolerance policy in place, so that excuse doesn't work for long term harassment. They basically admitted to a complete enforcement failure of their own policies. So the question is if Teslas management is that incompetent or racist and why their meme lord in charge hasn't done anything to fix the issue (outside of forced arbitration to silence workers).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- h0l0cube 5y ago
  > bathroom grafiti, which most of us developed thick skin against by our late teens You'd expect to see this at a public toilet, etched into school furniture, or at the urinal at a dive bar, but this has a totally different vibe in a workplace where everyone is being paid to be there, and colleagues need to trust each other. The 137 million payout does seem extreme, but it's probably just adequate to incentivize a company with the turnover of Tesla to improve its policies (and outcomes).
  - aaomidi 5y ago
    I'm tired of people expecting me to just take it when it comes to racism. No. You're going to fuck around and find out. As did Tesla. Don't expect me to develop a thick skin. The person paying $137 mil can do that.

throwaway4good 5y ago

Americans and their silly "justice system".

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

zivkovicp 5y ago

$137M, what a joke. I'm sure he'd been able to earn at least 2x that amount had he continued his employment.

gryn 5y ago
I think you are confusing M as in thousand and M as Million.

potamic 5y ago

> faced a hostile work environment in which, he told the court, colleagues used epithets to denigrate him and other Black workers, told him to “go back to Africa” and left racist graffiti in the restrooms and a racist drawing in his workspace. How do you even prove such a thing? Especially 5 years after you have left the place. And how does it not become a case of he said, she said?

erfgh 5y ago
There are witnesses and the jury evaluates them.
- pranavjoneja 5y ago
  This is a civil case. Juries are only for criminal cases.
  - IdoRA 5y ago
    Juries are common in civil trials in the US.
  - TheCoelacanth 5y ago
    > In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. 7th amendment says otherwise.
- mrjangles 5y ago
  The relevant section from the article >“In addition to Mr. Diaz, three other witnesses (all non-Tesla contract employees) testified at trial that they regularly heard racial slurs (including the n-word) on the Fremont factory floor. While they all agreed that the use of the n-word was not appropriate in the workplace, they also agreed that most of the time they thought the language was used in a ‘friendly’ manner and usually by African-American colleagues.”

Crack12 5y ago

I have a plan: You and me both get hired there, then you yell racist stuff at me, then I sue the company, then we split the $137M. edit: we can switch roles if you prefer

vkou 5y ago
In a company run by adults, your manager would discipline one of you, and the story would end there.
- eyeball 5y ago
  One of them just needs to become the manager.
  - vkou 5y ago
    You're going to need another person to become the HR rep that gets your case assigned, too, and probably that rep's manager/whomever handles appeals, as well as the manager & HR rep dealing with the cases that any concerned co-workers will raise, as well as everyone else who was involved that established a company-spanning pattern of harassment that nobody did anything about. An absolutely trivial conspiracy to pull off, especially given that the median payout for this is closer to ~zero dollars, and most likely, a ruined career for everyone involved, and federal prison time, if any of this is sussed out. Maybe the Donald will give you a pardon once he returns to the presidency, on July 4th, 2023, or whenever. Feel free to give it a shot, and let us know how it turns out. Meanwhile, I'm a bit busy conspiring with my buddy to become the CEO and the CFO of Tesla, respectively, so that we can take all it's money and fly to the Bahamas.
- tartoran 5y ago
  I wouldn’t be so sure that adults is enough to stop grifters as grifters are adults too, they have different goals and quite often they reach them.
- mizzack 5y ago
  Easy, we'll just give the manager a cut.

piokoch 5y ago

For me this is the most shocking: " the case was only able to move forward because Diaz had not signed one of Tesla’s mandatory arbitration agreements which the company uses to force employees to resolve disputes without a public trial" I think this is something very US-specific that is it legal to have an agreement that someone gives up basic citizen right like going to court and the right to have a public trial. In most countries something like this is just an abusive clause in the contract and is invalid automatically.

throwaway4good 5y ago
It is quite a normal thing in subcontracting.
- fwsgonzo 5y ago
  It should be extremely illegal and looked down upon.
trabant00 5y ago
Actually we have this practice in Europe too and it is legal. Do note it is for civil disputes only.
- coretx 5y ago
  Eh, not exactly. Altough you are supposed to try and resolve without going to court by law ( rendering such a clause redundant ), you ( natural person ) can not wave certain rights such as for example the right to go to court and have justice...
- BBC-vs-neolibs 5y ago
  But in many cases the contract as written is very over-reaching. In many European rights, the language of the contracts sign away rights which can not be signed away.
101_101 5y ago
Wait till you hear about how they treat amazon warehouse workers. But AWS is pretty cool huh? lol

vemv 5y ago

$137M very obviously incentivates people to engage into frivolous litigation. Only a fraction of that money should be awarded to the victim. The rest could as well go to charity, or our public health system, etc.

nuerow 5y ago
> $137M very obviously incentivates people to engage into frivolous litigation. The risk of frivolous litigation does not even register as a problem. The amount a company pays in damages is a factor of the corporation's size, and a consequence of what it takes to actually make them fix a systemic problem so that no one has to live with it. Otherwise, corporations could foster extremely toxic work environment and company cultures and any consequence would be written off as an operational cost. Also, mega corporations like Tesla do have their own dedicated HR and legal departments, so I'm sure they can handle an occasional court case.
- cutemonster 5y ago
  @vemv didn't say the fines were too high. S/he said that: "The rest could as well go to charity, or our public health system". What's a single person going to do with $100M. It would have been enough for a bunch of schools

1cvmask 5y ago

Anyone here know the law well? Would Tesla be open to lawsuits if they fired African-American colleagues who used racial slurs (including the n- word) in a "friendly" manner? From the article: “In addition to Mr. Diaz, three other witnesses (all non-Tesla contract employees) testified at trial that they regularly heard racial slurs (including the n-word) on the Fremont factory floor. While they all agreed that the use of the n-word was not appropriate in the workplace, they also agreed that most of the time they thought the language was used in a ‘friendly’ manner and usually by African-American colleagues.”

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
arp242 5y ago
Context is always important. "Haha, you're such a fucking asshole" is not the same as "YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!" either. It's hard to really judge the context from here; none of us were there, and I didn't read the full court report either (as most of us haven't). In another article Diaz said "some days I would just sit on my stairs and cry" so I'm gonna guess the context wasn't particularly friendly. It's still possible that there was a mismatch in how it was intended: the offenders intended it in a friendly way, but that's not how it was taken. It can happen to the best of us sometimes. One mistake is one mistake and can happen, but to be honest you need to be pretty darn tone-deaf to not notice that someone is uncomfortable from someone's response in both verbal and non-verbal clues, or a bit of an asshole to choose to ignore this. All in all, based on the reporting I find the "it was intended in a friendly manner" rather unconvincing, even when we give people the benefit of the doubt. Was it truly "racist"? I don't know; I'll withhold that judgement. But at the very least it strikes me as insensitive and unkind.

KronisLV 5y ago

Honest question: tossing morals and ethics aside, how long will it be before the employees of the large corporations actively look for ways to sue them to get as much money in compensations as possible? After all, even if such actions would get you blacklisted by many corporations, regardless of whether you were in the right ethically to take them to court vs just nitpicking, $137M feels like enough money to never have to work again. Seems like that would be a measured risk that some people could be willing to take. Personally, if i found my working conditions inadequate, i'd just leave and look for different opportunities because to a relatively low paid people like myself getting on any sort of a blacklist or getting negative publicity would be career ending, i probably could not afford court expenses or the mental toll something like that would take, and just generally am not a person who'd want to sue others and stir trouble (like many people, i'd assume), but what other reasons are there for people to look at employment and lawsuits as an unethical "get rich quick" scheme? Disclaimer: don't assume that i condone any of the above or would like to see a world in which abusive behaviour cannot rightfully be settled in court. However, I'm curious about the mechanisms in place to prevent the exploitation of the court system. This is especially relevant because of patent trolling and insurance fraud in certain countries.

EastOfTruth 5y ago

The families of those wrongfully killed by police get a lot less then that, $137M is just nuts.

Andy_G11 5y ago

I am sure that the abuse stopped him from rising to the top - a key requirement for an elevator operator. Sadly, his victory will no doubt lead to fewer low paid roles in big firms as CEOs will not like it that even the littlest man or woman can hold behemoths to account: a big motivator for automation.

reureu 5y ago

Previously, a black employee went through mandatory arbitration with Tesla, and the arbiter found it was ok for white employees to call black employees the n-word because it's used in rap music. Some may feel the $137M award to be a lot, but Tesla has been getting away with inaction for years. Maybe that will actually make them perk up and do something. > an arbitrator hired by Tesla to resolve the case in a series of closed-door hearings agreed the slurs weren't racist. Rather, they were "consistent with lyrics and images commonly found in rap songs and freestyle rap competitions," retired Marin County Judge Lynn Duryee wrote in a decision reviewed by Protocol. In a footnote, Duryee cited lyrics on genius.com for a song by Insanity, a little-known Canadian rapper. https://www.protocol.com/tesla-racism-claims-arbitration https://www.protocol.com/tesla-racism-claims-arbitration

throw149102 5y ago

It's strange - considering what I've heard about lottery winners, that 137 million will probably ruin that guys life. Most people can't survive something like that.

tatrajim 5y ago

Statement by Tesla, including relevant claims not in the CNBC article. - Mr. Diaz never worked for Tesla. He was a contract employee who worked for Citistaff. - Mr. Diaz worked as an elevator operator at the Fremont factory for nine months, from June 2015 to March 2016. - In addition to Mr. Diaz, three other witnesses (all non-Tesla contract employees) testified at trial that they regularly heard racial slurs (including the n-word) on the Fremont factory floor. While they all agreed that the use of the n-word was not appropriate in the workplace, they also agreed that most of the time they thought the language was used in a “friendly” manner and usually by African-American colleagues. They also told the jury about racist graffiti in the bathrooms, which was removed by our janitorial staff; - There was no witness testimony or other evidence that anyone ever heard the n-word used toward Mr. Diaz. - Mr. Diaz made written complaints to his non-Tesla supervisors. Those were well-documented in the nine months he worked at our factory. But he didn’t make any complaints about the n-word until after he was not hired full-time by Tesla – and after he hired an attorney. - The three times that Mr. Diaz did complain about harassment, Tesla stepped in and made sure responsive and timely action was taken by the staffing agencies: two contractors were fired and one was suspended (who had drawn a racially offensive cartoon). Mr. Diaz himself testified that he was “very satisfied” with the results of one of the investigations, and he agreed that there was follow-up on each of his complaints. - Even though Mr. Diaz now complains about racial harassment at Fremont, at the time he said he was being harassed, he recommended to his son and daughter – while they were all living together in the same home – that they work at Tesla with him. https://www.tesla.com/blog/regarding-todays-jury-verdict https://www.tesla.com/blog/regarding-todays-jury-verdict

stevespang 5y ago
This verdict will very likely be reduced considerably on appeal - - as most are . . .

kaminar 5y ago

What a crock...he was probably looking to get $100k

siwatanejo 5y ago

Most people saying that 137 is too much get responded with "this the only way Tesla can learn". Sure, I agree with that, but is 100% of the fine being awarded to the victim? That doesn't look right, it makes it a honeypot (incentive) for future trials. Even one tenth of that would be too high for a work issue that lasted one 1 year, why make the victim rich (and his decendants)? Compensation doesn't mean windfall/lottery.