Black Ex-Tesla Worker Who Claimed Racial Abuse Awarded $137M

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Tesla Inc. indispensable wage astir $137 cardinal to a Black erstwhile idiosyncratic who said helium suffered radical maltreatment astatine the electrical carmaker’s San Francisco Bay Area factory.

The assemblage successful San Francisco agreed that Owen Diaz was subjected to radical harassment and a hostile enactment environment.

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Diaz alleged successful a suit that helium was harassed and faced “daily racist epithets,” including the “N-word,” portion moving astatine Tesla’s Fremont works successful 2015 and 2016 earlier quitting. Diaz was a contracted elevator operator.

Diaz alleged that employees drew swastikas and near racist graffiti and drawings astir the plant. He contended that supervisors failed to halt the abuse.

“Tesla’s progressive representation was a façade papering implicit its regressive, demeaning attraction of African-American employees,” the suit said.

Diaz was awarded $6.9 successful damages for affectional distress and $130 cardinal successful punitive damages, his attorney, Lawrence A. Organ, told the Washington Post.

“It took 4 agelong years to get to this point,” Diaz told the New York Times. “It’s similar a large value has been pulled disconnected my shoulders.”

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“It’s a large happening erstwhile 1 of the richest corporations successful America has to person a reckoning of the abhorrent conditions astatine its mill for Black people,” Organ, of the California Civil Rights Law Group, told the Times.

It wasn’t instantly wide whether Tesla would entreaty the decision. An email from The Associated Press seeking remark from Tesla wasn’t instantly returned Monday night.

However, Tesla antecedently denied immoderate cognition of the alleged racist behaviour astatine the plant, which has astir 10,000 workers.

If upheld, the grant would beryllium a stroke to a institution that has been taxable to assorted allegations of workplace problems but requires employees to resoluteness disputes done mandatory arbitration, which the steadfast has seldom lost.

In May, an arbitrator ordered Tesla to wage much than $1 cardinal implicit akin allegations by different erstwhile Fremont mill worker. That worker alleged that co-workers called him a radical slur and supervisors ignored his complaints.

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Diaz, who was contracted done a staffing agency, didn’t person to motion an arbitration agreement.