100 workers suing Tesla

Tesla’s production floor is a “hotbed for racist behavior,” more than 100 African American employees claimed in a lawsuit in which they alleged black workers at the Palo Alto carmaker suffer severe and pervasive harassment.

The employees are seeking permission from a judge to sue as a group and are seeking unspecified general and punitive monetary damages as well as an order for Tesla to implement policies to prevent and correct harassment.

“Although Tesla stands out as a groundbreaking company at the forefront of the electric car revolution, its standard operating procedure at the Tesla factory is pre-Civil Rights era race discrimination,” the employees said in the complaint, filed Monday in Alameda County Superior Court.

Tesla has roughly 33,000 employees globally but has never publicly released its diversity statistics. More than 10,000 employees work at its sole auto assembly plant in Fremont, where the United Auto Workers is trying to persuade workers to join the union. On Tesla’s most recent earnings call, CEO Elon Musk acknowledged that the company recently fired about 700 workers for low performance.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Marcus Vaughn, who worked in the Fremont factory from April 23 to Oct. 31. Vaughn alleged that employees and supervisors regularly used the “N word” around him and other black colleagues. Vaughn said he complained in writing to human resources and Musk, and was terminated in late October for “not having a positive attitude.”

Tesla didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Larry Organ, an attorney at the California Civil Rights Law Group, said that Vaughn reached out to him after the law firm sued Tesla on behalf of other African American employees who had complained about racial harassment this year.