Tesla Inc’s manufacturing facility in Fremont, California, is more like a crude frat home than a facility owned by a cutting-edge firm within the coronary heart of a progressive area, six women who’re present and former staff claimed within the newest barrage of lawsuits to hit Tesla over alleged sexual harassment.
“Although Tesla publicly claims that it fosters a safe and respectful environment for its workers, the truth is that for years Tesla has subjected women working in its Fremont factory facilities to nightmarish conditions of rampant sexual harassment,” in line with the opening paragraph in every of the complaints filed Tuesday in Alameda County Superior Court.
Tesla didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The complaints element harassment from male colleagues and supervisors in addition to an absence of response from Tesla when the claims had been reported internally. Five of the six women who sued labored in Fremont; one was in southern California.
Roughly 10,000 folks work at the Fremont plant, the place Tesla makes the electrical Model S, X, 3 and Y. The manufacturing facility has lengthy been the topic of complaints about racial and sexual harassment. Many complaints by no means make it to court docket as a result of Tesla’s full time staff signal agreements requiring office disputes to be dealt with in closed-door arbitration – which itself has drawn hearth from Tesla traders.
In May, a Black former worker received a uncommon US$1mil (RM4.22mil) discrimination award in arbitration over the corporate’s failure to cease his supervisors from calling him the “N-word”. More not too long ago, a federal jury in San Francisco weighed related allegations by a former contract employee who was an elevator operator at the Fremont plant and awarded him US$137mil (RM579.37mil) believed to be one of many largest-ever verdicts in a racial discrimination case by a single plaintiff. Tesla is difficult the decision as “without precedent” and stated in a court docket submitting it “bears no relationship to the actual evidence at trial”.
“Tesla has failed to take sexual harassment seriously, from the top of the company down,” David Lowe, a associate at San Francisco regulation agency Rudy Exelrod Zieff & Lowe, stated in a press release. Lowe additionally represents Jessica Barraza, who filed a swimsuit final month over “rampant” harassment at the Fremont facility.
The six complaints had been reported earlier by the Washington Post. – Bloomberg
