Popular car maker, Tesla is being hit by another lawsuit. The company is being accused of racial harassment by 15 of its Black current and former workers.
The said group have filed a case against the electric car maker and 46 of its officials, workers and/or representatives, claiming that “racial harassment and discrimination have run rampant and continue to do so at Tesla” despite the employer’s “knowledge of the harassment and/or discrimination.”
Business Insider Africa reports that the lawsuit filed in a California court on June 30 said Tesla’s factories have been: “systematically turned into a racially hostile work environment.” The fifteen plaintiffs in the new lawsuit variously accuse Tesla of overlooking Black employees for promotions, allowing the use of racial slurs including the N-word to go unpunished, and failing to remove racist graffiti in the bathrooms including swastikas and the letters “KKK.”
According to Tech Story, one of the complainants reported that he was attacked by another staff of the factory while he was on his duty and when he complained about the matter to his head, the head replied to him saying “suck it up and be a man, this happens here all the time”. He also said that after this incident he was badgered by one of his colleagues who had thrown metal bolts at him and even at that time his head did not take any action when complained about the matter.
The lawsuit comes as Tesla is in the process of being sued by California’s civil rights regulator, which filed a lawsuit against Tesla in February saying a three-year-long investigation had found evidence Tesla’s Fremont factory was a “racially segregated workplace.”
Tesla has been at the center of controversy for months. In June, a former employee sued the company after its ‘mass layoff’ allegedly violated federal law because it did not provide advance notice of the workforce reduction.
