Yet Another Tesla Employee Is Suing The Company Alleging "Unchecked Racism"
Another day, another Tesla lawsuit alleging "unchecked" racism at a company plant.
This time, a gay black worker has sued the company, accusing it of “festering” racism by "ignoring the racial and homophobic slurs and physical harm she endured," according to Bloomberg.
Former contract worker Kaylen Barker is alleging that Tesla ignores discrimination based on race, sexual orientation and gender. She cited abuse occurring at the same time that Tesla was defending another lawsuit that the company wound up being ordered to pay $137 million in damages for.
Barker claims that a white coworker struck her with "a hot grinding tool while calling her the n-word". She claims she was called "stupid", "dumb" and "bitch", according to her complaint, which was filed Tuesday.
The 25 year old said in a statement: “I feel like I have been tortured and sent back in time before African Americans had civil rights." I was "violated physically, mentally, and emotionally” because [I'm] “an African American lesbian.”
She was hired at Tesla’s Lathrop, California, sub-assembly plant in February 2021 and was fired in October 2021. She called the firing retaliatory.
Barker’s attorney Bernard Alexander, who also represented victim Owen Diaz in the $137 million case, said: “Tesla claims that it’s changed but it’s not a different company. Now we have an employee who faced discrimination at the time of and after the Diaz trial and Tesla basically did nothing to protect her.”
Recall, a jury awarded Diaz $137 million for enduring "racist abuse" while working for the company. Diaz’s attorneys told CNBC that the case was only able to move forward because Diaz didn't sign one of the company's mandatory arbitration agreements.
Alexander, said at the time: “We were able to put the jury in the shoes of our client. When Tesla came to court and tried to say they were zero tolerance and they were fulfilling their duty? The jury was just offended by that because it was actually zero responsibility.”
Diaz, like Barker, found the work at Tesla through a staffing agency in 2015 and told the jury that coworkers told him to "go back to Africa" and left racist graffiti in the company's restrooom. They also left a racist drawing in his workspace, he told the court.
Back in August, Tesla was forced to pay another former employee $1 million for enduring racism while working at the company. The former employee won a ruling that the company failed to stop his supervisors from calling him the "N-word" at the company's Fremont factory.
Melvin Berry won the discrimination award after a closed-door proceeding that came on the heels of "years of complaints from Black workers that Tesla turned a blind eye to the commonplace use of racial slurs on the assembly line," Bloomberg wrote at the time.
Similarly, it was also alleged that the company was slow to remove graffiti containing hate symbols.
Berry was hired by Tesla in 2015 and quit within 18 months. He claimed that when he confronted a supervisor about being called the "N-word" he was forced to work longer hours and "push a heavier cart".
Diaz commented on the verdict, stating: “I’m really happy to be able to shine a light on what happened. I want it to be less about me and more about what’s going on at Tesla. It’s like they saw right through the smoke and mirrors. They were courageous in saying ‘enough’ to this billion-dollar company and say, ‘This is not acceptable.”’
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