A jury originally ordered Tesla to pay over $137 million in a racial discrimination case brought by a former employee of its assembly plant in Fremont, California. A judge deemed that amount too excessive and a jury cut it down to $3 million.
The case was brought by Owen Diaz, who worked as an elevator operator at the plant. He reported he regularly heard racial slurs, including the N-word, on the Fremont factory floor, and saw racist graffiti in bathrooms and a racially insensitive cartoon.
Diaz, who is Black, claimed that the electric carmaker cast a blind eye to harassment. His supervisors allegedly taunted him with racist imagery and used epithets against him. “[I] had supervisors telling me, ‘N—-r, hurry up and push the button’; ‘N—-r, push these batteries out of the elevator.’ And they were also telling me, ‘N—–s aren’t shit,’” he said.
In 2021, Diaz originally asked for $101 million dollars and was rewarded $137 Million dollars instead. US District Judge William Orrick said the amount was too high and offered Diaz $15 million in damages in the case instead, but Diaz rejected the offer. Instead he choose to gamble and have a new trial. On Monday, a San Francisco federal jury said the electric car company will now have to pay Diaz a total of $3,175,000.
The trial is separate from another case brought by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which said the agency had received “hundreds” of complaints from workers alleging racism and harassment at the Fremont factory.
Tesla has denied the charges that the situation was as bad as alleged in the two suits, but it has admitted there were problems which needed to be addressed at the plant.
In a blog post the company posted after the original 2021 verdict for $137 million, Valerie Capers Workman, then Tesla’s Vice President, People, wrote, “We do recognize that in 2015 and 2016 we were not perfect. 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.”
Capers Workman has since left Tesla and is now working as a bus driver. Watch the video below.
