2 weeks Ago By Joe Kukura
One former Fremont Tesla factory employee has received a settlement in a three-year-old lawsuit over racially charged workplace incidents. But there are still more big lawsuits against Tesla looming, including a class-action suit from 16,000 Black workers. Despite Elon Musk’s currently very unpopular electric car company Tesla having moved its headquarters from the Bay Area to Texas , Tesla still operates a huge factory in the East Bay’s Fremont.
(They even say they’re hiring !) Though if you’re job-hunting, understand that Fremont Tesla factory has had a reputation for being a pretty racist workplace for the better part of ten years, with one recent lawsuit from a Black worker saying her manager would say “Welcome to the slave house” and “Welcome to the plantation.” That worker is Raina Pierce, who sued Tesla in 2022 over racial discrimination in that workplace. In addition to the above claims, she also said that her manager discussed not being able to tolerate Black people, that Black workers were not allowed to switch their shifts as easily, and that those who complained faced retaliation from HR.
On Monday, the Bay Area News Group reported that Tesla has settled the suit that Pierce brought against them , though the financial terms were secret and not announced. Yet this may just be the beginning of the troubles for Tesla’s Fremont plant, a location whose “Lawsuits and controversies” section on Wikipedia is quite lengthy. The Bay Area News Group has reported on a laundry list of other racial incidents against Black employees there, and in 2022, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) sued Tesla over a rash of these incidents .
That lawsuit alleged that Black Tesla employees there saw racist graffiti “including ‘N (word),’ ‘KKK,’ swastikas, the Confederate flag, a white (supremacist) skull, ‘go back to Africa,’ and ‘mayate’ – written on the restroom walls, restroom stalls, lockers, workplace benches, workstations, lunch tables, and the break room.” But the biggest lawsuit may be a separate 2022 class-action lawsuit against Tesla calling that factory a "hotbed for racist behavior,” and per the News Group, “More than 16,000 current and former Black workers at Tesla have signed on to the lawsuit.” The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission also sued Tesla in 2023, alleging that Tesla was “tolerating widespread and ongoing racial harassment of its Black employees,” though that lawsuit came before the Elon-friendly Trump took office.
But these cases generally don’t make it to trial, because Tesla makes its workers sign arbitration agreements, which tend to lead to private settlements where dollar totals are not revealed publicly. Related: State Agency Sues Tesla Over ‘Racially Segregated Workplace’ Where Racial Slurs Are Thrown Around Commonly [SFist] Image: Tesla.
