Electric car maker Tesla has been ordered to pay nearly $3.2 million to a black former worker who won a racial harassment lawsuit. Owen Diaz, an elevator operator who worked at his Fremont factory from 2015 to 2016, was subjected to a “racially hostile” work environment, a federal jury said. to report the news BBC.
However, the payment was reduced by 98% from the $137 million it was originally awarded in 2021. A judge ruled last year that the initial amount was excessive. “Had we been allowed to introduce new evidence, the verdict would have been zero,” Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk wrote on Twitter. “The jury did the best they could with the information they had. I respect the decision,” he added. But Elon Musk didn’t provide details on what new evidence Tesla might have presented. Tesla’s attorney, Alex Spiro, declined to comment on the conviction.
In the original suit, Owen Diaz said African-American workers “encountered a scene from the Jim Crow era” at the company’s Fremont, California, plant. He added that black workers were regularly subjected to racial slurs with graffiti on the factory floor and racist graffiti in the toilets. Not only. He also added that employees would refer to areas where black or African-American personnel worked with historical names, such as “the plantation.” And that a worker would have suffered racist insults “up to 50-100 times a day”.
In short, in his lawsuit, filed in 2017, Diaz repeatedly underlined the situation to which the African American employees of the factory, where his son also worked, were subjected: they were usually the target of racist epithets and gestures of contempt. Despite complaints to supervisors, Tesla took no action. A VP of human resources at Tesla downplayed the allegations of racist abuse but acknowledged that Tesla “wasn’t perfect” when Diaz worked there. The company also said that the situation has since changed for the better.