The U.S. Equal Employment Alternative Fee has sued Tesla, accusing Elon Musk’s electrical automobile maker of violating “federal legislation by tolerating widespread and ongoing racial harassment of its Black staff and by subjecting a few of these employees to retaliation for opposing the harassment.”
Tesla didn’t instantly reply to CNBC’s request for remark.
The federal company liable for implementing civil rights legal guidelines towards office discrimination introduced it was submitting the swimsuit towards Tesla on Thursday.
In its criticism, the EEOC alleged that non-Black offenders at Tesla “bandied slurs and epithets overtly” round high-traffic work areas round or on the car manufacturing strains. Allegedly, supervisors and managers witnessed the racially offensive conduct however failed or refused to intercede.
When Black employees at Tesla reported the “slurs, insults, graffiti and misconduct” to Tesla’s human sources division, worker relations groups or different managerial personnel, the company mentioned Tesla failed and refused to take steps to deal with the habits.
Tesla was beforehand sued by a state civil rights company in California over associated allegations. A jury additionally beforehand ordered Tesla to pay a Black former employee, Owen Diaz, about $3.2 million in damages after discovering he endured racist discrimination whereas working there in 2015.
Final 12 months, a monetary submitting from Tesla revealed that the EEOC had issued a trigger discovering towards the corporate. After that, Tesla engaged in a compulsory conciliation course of with the EEOC, the submitting mentioned. The conciliation course of was not profitable, resulting in the swimsuit introduced Thursday.
In response to a press release despatched to CNBC by the federal company, the EEOC is searching for “compensatory and punitive damages, and again pay for the affected employees, in addition to injunctive aid designed to reform Tesla’s employment practices to stop such discrimination sooner or later.”
The lawsuit, EEOC v Tesla, Inc., Case No. 4:23-cv-04984, was filed in U.S. District Court docket for the Northern District of California.
Learn the lawsuit beneath:
