Tesla to pay $137 million to former employee for ignoring racial abuse

A jury ordered Tesla to pay $137 to Owen Diaz, a former employee who accused the carmaker of ignoring racial abuse at the workplace while he was working there. Diaz's lawyer Lawrence Organ, a member of the California Civil Rights Law Group said in an interview on Monday that it is a great thing when one of the richest corporations in America has to have a reckoning of the abhorrent conditions at its factory for Black people. The issue from the Jury was declared by a federal court in San Francisco and Tesla's lawyers did not immediately comment. 

Owen Diaz said he worked as an elevator operator at Tesla's factory in Fremont, California for nearly a year a supervisor and colleagues repeatedly referred to him with racial slurs. He also added that the employees had drawn swastikas and racial epithets in the bathroom stalls and derogatory caricatures of Black children around the factory. Even after repeated complaints, the company did not address the behavior. "They didn't remove the behavior, they just let them keep adding and adding", he said. Despite the abuse he faced at the company, Mr. Diaz said he reached a breaking point when he saw that there were similar racial epithets directed at his son Demetric who also secured a job at the company. The jury declared that Tesla had created a hostile work environment and failed to address racism.

Source: The New York Times