Issued on: 05/10/2021 – 09:40 – San Francisco (AFP)
A jury in California on Monday ordered Tesla to pay a Black former employee $137 million in damages for turning a blind eye to racism the man encountered at the firm’s auto plant in Fremont, US media reported.
Owen Diaz was hired through a staffing agency as an elevator operator at the electric vehicle maker’s Fremont factory between June 2015 and July 2016, where he was subjected to racist abuse and a hostile work environment, according to the court filing.
In his lawsuit, Diaz said African-American employees at the factory, where his son also worked, were regularly subjected to racist epithets and derogatory imagery.
She also stressed that Tesla had made changes since Diaz worked at the company, adding a diversity team and an employee relations team dedicated to investigating employee complaints.
“While we strongly believe that these facts don’t justify the verdict reached by the jury in San Francisco, we do recognize that in 2015 and 2016 we were not perfect,” Workman said.
“We’re still not perfect. But we have come a long way from 5 years ago. We continue to grow and improve in how we address employee concerns. Occasionally, we’ll get it wrong, and when that happens we should be held accountable.”
Tesla, a global leader in electric cars, has a market capitalization of around $780 billion and its chief executive, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, is the world’s richest person, currently worth $211 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
