Tesla Inc. must pay nearly $137 million to a former black worker who said he suffered racial abuse at the electric automaker’s factory in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Former black Tesla worker who alleged racial abuse receives $137 million
The San Francisco jury agreed that Owen Diaz was subjected to racial harassment and a hostile work environment.
Diaz alleged in a lawsuit that he was harassed and faced “daily racial epithets” while working at Tesla’s Fremont plant in 2015 and 2016 before resigning.
Diaz was a contract elevator operator.
Diaz alleged that employees drew swastikas and left graffiti and racist drawings around the plant. He argued that supervisors failed to stop the abuse.
“Tesla’s progressive image was a facade covering up its regressive and demeaning treatment of African-American employees,” the lawsuit says.
Diaz was awarded $6.9 in emotional damages and $130 million in punitive damages, his lawyer, Lawrence A. Organ, to the Washington Post .
“It’s taken four long years to get to this point,” Diaz told the New York Times .
“It’s like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders.”
“It’s a great thing when one of the richest corporations in America has to take into account the abominable conditions in its factory for blacks,” Organ, of the California Civil Rights Law Group, told the Times .
It was not immediately clear whether Tesla will appeal the decision. An email from The Associated Press seeking comment from Tesla was not immediately returned Monday night.
However, Tesla previously denied knowledge of alleged racist conduct at the plant, which has about 10,000 workers.
If the award is upheld, it would be a blow to a company that has been the subject of several allegations of workplace problems, but which requires employees to resolve disputes through binding arbitration, which the company has rarely lost.
