[ad_1]
A jury ordered Tesla to pay $ 137 million to Owen Diaz, a former black employee who accused the automaker of ignoring the racial abuse he faced while working there, said Monday evening his lawyer, Lawrence Organ.
“It’s a good thing when one of America’s richest corporations has to consider the odious conditions in its factory for blacks,” Mr. Organ, of the California Civil Rights Law Group, said in an interview.
The jury’s decision, in federal court in San Francisco, was reported earlier by Bloomberg News. Tesla’s lawyers did not immediately comment.
In an interview, Mr Diaz said he was relieved by the jury’s decision.
“It took four long years to get there,” he said Monday evening. “It’s like a big weight has been lifted from my shoulders.”
Mr Diaz said he worked as an elevator operator at the Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., For about a year in 2015 and 2016. There, he said, a supervisor and others colleagues have mentioned it several times using racial slurs. He also said employees drew swastikas and crossed out a racial epithet in a toilet stall and left derogatory caricature drawings of black children around the factory. Despite repeated complaints, the company has done little to address this behavior, he said.
“It’s not like they’re removing the offensive behavior, they’re just letting people keep adding and adding,” he said.
After deliberating for about four hours, the jury agreed with Mr Diaz’s claim that Tesla had created a hostile work environment by failing to address the racism he faced, Mr Organ said. The vast majority of the prize – $ 130 million – was punitive damages for the company. The rest was due to the emotional distress Mr. Diaz suffered, Mr. Organ said.
Despite the abuse he himself faced, Mr Diaz said he reached a breaking point when he witnessed similar racist epithets directed at his son, Demetric, who got a job – his first – in the business with the help of Mr. Diaz.
“My son saw his father get smashed in front of him,” Diaz said.
In an internal email to Tesla staff obtained by Mr. Organ and shared with The Times, Valerie Capers Workman, a human resources manager, played down the allegations in the lawsuit.
“In addition to Mr. Diaz, three other witnesses (all non-Tesla contract employees) told the trial that they regularly hear racist slurs (including the N word) at the Fremont factory,” he said. -she writes. “While they all agreed that the use of the N word was not appropriate in the workplace, they also agreed that most of the time they thought the language was used in a ‘friendly’ and generally by African-American colleagues. “
The company, she wrote in the email, responded to Mr Diaz’s complaints, laying off two contractors and suspending another. Tesla does not believe the facts support the verdict, she wrote, but acknowledges the company was “not perfect” in 2015 and 2016. “We are still not perfect,” she said added. “But we’ve come a long way.”
Mr Diaz sued Tesla alongside his son and another former black employee, but only the allegations of the eldest Mr Diaz stood trial. It was not immediately clear whether Tesla planned to appeal the decision.
[ad_2]
Source link