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A former Tesla factory worker claimed that racism is rampant on the assembly line. He has achieved a rare feat: forcing the electric car manufacturer to confront him in public court.
But when Owen Diaz began to submit his case to a jury trial in San Francisco on Friday, he faced a company that almost never lost a workplace dispute.
According to data compiled by JAMS, the arbitration service provider that handled the case, among the nearly 90 employment-related arbitration complaints filed against Tesla from 2016 to March this year, 11 of the company’s complaints were heard behind closed doors by private judges. After the decision was made, the case was won. Company disputes.
Tesla only lost one arbitration-this case is very similar to the Diaz case, which ended in May and the former employee received $1 million in compensation. Most other cases were settled without a hearing or were abandoned, withdrawn or dismissed.
Diaz is not subject to the company’s mandatory arbitration policy and can file a lawsuit in federal court because he came to Tesla as a contractor through a personnel agency.
The trial will refute Diaz’s allegations that he has been repeatedly referred to as the “N word” and other nicknames in opposition to Tesla’s defense that Tesla never intended to embarrass him and hurt him or ignore the human resources agency placement Rights and safety of African American workers. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment before the trial.
Contract employees Owen Diaz (right) and Demetric Diaz (left) sued Tesla for racial harassment and hostility [File: Bloomberg]A few days of testimony from colleagues, supervisors, and human resources personnel will focus on black workers’ complaints over the years that the managers of Tesla’s Fremont, California plant turned a blind eye to the racial slurs commonly used on assembly lines and were cleaning up with a swastika. The graffiti of characters and other hate symbols scribbled in public areas is progressing slowly.
Tesla acquired this factory in 2010, and about 10,000 people work in the factory.
The case may also encourage shareholder activists, who have pushed Tesla’s board of directors to use arbitration to resolve complaints about sexual harassment and racial discrimination, but they have not yet succeeded.
The board of directors urged investors to vote against such a proposal at the October 7 shareholder meeting, although other major Silicon Valley companies, from Alphabet Inc. to Uber Technologies Inc., have waived the use of mandatory arbitration.
Hilary Hammell, an employment discrimination lawyer for Levy Vinick Burrell Hyams LLP in Oakland, California, said: “It is very important that Tesla has to defend himself in public.” “The fact that arbitration agreements are so common in employment does weaken. The right to trial by jury, especially when it comes to our civil rights.”
Ford Motor Company, General Motors Company and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles have all fought against complaints of racial prejudice by factory workers, but none of these cases have entered the trial stage.
David Oppenheimer, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, said that racial discrimination lawsuits like Diaz are “quite rare” because they usually settle out of court or are forced to arbitrate. He said that the plaintiff’s winning rate in workplace discrimination lawsuits in court is 30% to 35%.
It is expected that the testimony of workers, supervisors, and human resources personnel will focus on the complaints of black workers over the years that the managers of the Tesla factory in Fremont, California, USA turned a blind eye to the racial slander commonly used at the conference, and cleaned up swastikas and other Graffiti of hate symbols is slow in public areas [File: Bloomberg]Diaz, who worked as an elevator operator at the Fremont factory, filed a lawsuit in 2017 with his son and another man working in the factory. According to court records, his son Demetric later withdrew from the case, and the third plaintiff reached a settlement with Tesla, but the terms were not disclosed.
Diaz hopes that Tesla will compensate him for his emotional distress and will require the jury to award punitive damages to prevent future wrongdoing. “When you look at the employer’s assets, the amount involved in most employment discrimination cases is not large,” Oppenheimer said.
Tesla stated in court documents that it had taken prompt measures to correct the illegal behavior of its factories and denied that it had taken “malicious or oppressive” methods against Diaz.
The company stated that it “lacked enough knowledge” to resolve Diaz’s claims that colleagues told him to “return to Africa”, called him “N-word”, and left racist portraits on bathrooms and cardboard packages. And graffiti, depicting dark-skinned characters with bones in their hair, thick lips, and the word “Shh!” beside them.
To support Diaz’s claim, his lawyers have lined up as witnesses, and other former workers claim that they face similar patterns of racist behavior.
The case is Diaz v. Tesla Inc., 17-cv-06748, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).
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