{"id":22734,"date":"2021-10-06T14:31:44","date_gmt":"2021-10-06T09:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/?p=22734"},"modified":"2021-10-06T14:31:44","modified_gmt":"2021-10-06T09:31:44","slug":"tesla-hit-with-137-million-judgment-in-workplace-racism-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/archives\/22734","title":{"rendered":"Tesla hit with $137 million judgment in workplace racism case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Web Desk:<\/p>\n<p>According to Associated Press, United States District Court in northern California ordered Tesla Inc. to pay over $137 million in damages to a Black former employee on Monday, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n<p>Owen Diaz alleged in a lawsuit that he was harassed and faced daily racist epithets, including the N-word while working at Tesla\u2019s Fremont plant in 2015 and 2016 before quitting. Diaz was a contracted elevator operator. Diaz alleged that employees drew swastikas and left racist graffiti and drawings around the plant. He contended that supervisors failed to stop the abuse.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cTesla\u2019s progressive image was a fa\u00e7ade papering over its regressive, demeaning treatment of African-American employees,\u201d the lawsuit said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A federal jury agreed that the employee had been subject to a racially hostile work environment and that Tesla had failed to take adequate measures to prevent Diaz from being racially abused, according to the report.<\/p>\n<p>The jury awarded Diaz $6.9 in damages for emotional distress and $130 million in punitive damages, his attorney, Lawrence A. Organ, told the Washington Post.<\/p>\n<p>The ruling comes as Tesla faces other racial discrimination complaints. Tesla has previously denied any knowledge of the alleged racist conduct at the plant, which has about 10,000 workers.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this year, the company had to pay $1 million to a Black former employee who had faced similar issues involving racism. That case was settled by arbitration, per company policy on resolving most employee disputes. Diaz&#8217;s case was not subject to arbitration and could take the case to federal court because he was employed as a contractor through a staffing agency.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not yet clear whether Tesla will appeal the court&#8217;s decision. The settlement would be one of the largest ever paid out in a case involving racial discrimination at the workplace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Web Desk: According to Associated Press, United States District Court in northern California ordered Tesla Inc. to pay over $137 million in damages to a Black former employee on Monday, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal. Owen Diaz alleged in a lawsuit that he was harassed and faced daily racist epithets, including the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":22735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,16,1378],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-technology","category-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22736,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22734\/revisions\/22736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}