[TAG0][TAG1]
- On Tuesday, an ex-Tesla worker testified that he heard the N-word a lot and found his feces at work.
- It was part of an ex-contractor's retrial who had filed a racial discrimination suit against Tesla.
- After the worker refused to accept a $15 million payment, the case is being retried.
An early issue in a lawsuit against Tesla for racial discrimination stemmed from a story about a Tesla worker who claimed he found feces on his factory cart.
The US District Court, Northern District of California began a five-day retrial of Owen Diaz. He was a former contractor and claimed that he was discriminated against because of his race while at Tesla. A jury awarded Diaz $137 million in damages in 2021. However, after Tesla challenged the verdict, a judge ruled that the amount was too high and reduced it to $15 million. Diaz and his attorneys refused to accept the $15 million settlement. Instead, they opted for a retrial with a new jury.
Wheeler was among a few former Tesla workers who testified Tuesday about their experiences as Black workers at Tesla’s Fremont plant. Law360 reported that Larry Organ, a lawyer for the California Civil Rights Law Group said Wheeler's story was due to Tesla's inability to follow up on complaints.
Former Tesla contractor Michael Wheeler said that the N-word was used frequently at the factory. He also described an incident in which he claimed he found feces in the seat of the work cart driver. Wheeler stated that the incident happened one evening during his night shift after he had taken a 30-minute break.
Wheeler stated, "I returned to my cart and slid in the seat. I felt a wet sensation on my pants." "So I got up from the seat and found that I was sitting in feces."
According to the ex-contractor, he reported the incident directly to Tesla. However, he was not informed that Tesla had ever addressed the matter. Wheeler said that he asked for video footage of the incident because he believed that the factory would have surveillance cameras in the area. Supervisors told him that no cameras were in the area.
Law360 reported that Tesla first tried to exclude the story from the trial. They also argued Monday that the incident was not comparable to Diaz's. According to the publication, lawyers for the carmaker sought to exclude all evidence of harm to others at the factory. This included Wheeler's testimony. Law360 reports that the judge did not rule at Monday's hearing, but submitted the motions to the court.
According to Law360, Judge William Orrick stated that "the parties are bound with the decisions they made before and at the initial trial that resulted the evidence that was presented during the first trial."
Wheeler testified at the 2021 initial trial about the alleged incident.
Wheeler sent an email to several Tesla supervisors in which he stated that he believed that the incident was "a possible hatred crime," according an exhibit from Tuesday's trial.
Wheeler stated in an email that "This was intentionally placed where it could be seen but not sat on." "Please inspect the cameras and have HR take this person out. Please have hazwaste come and pick it up. It's still there. It doesn't matter if no one appears on the cameras. He said, "But, please, if foul play is confirmed, I need to see concrete evidence that this person was terminated."
During cross-examination by Tesla's lawyer Alex Spiro, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan suggested that no employees were fired or interviewed following the alleged incident. The cart Wheeler referred too had been used for transporting an employee with the "stomach virus." He provided an exhibit that contained a response to Wheeler’s email. It was a reply from a building services manager who indicated that they were investigating whether the incident had been related to anyone who'd been sick on that night.
Diaz filed his original lawsuit in 2017. Diaz filed his lawsuit against Tesla in 2017. Similar lawsuits have been filed by other Tesla factory workers. A California civil rights regulator is also suing the electric-car manufacturer. It claims that "hundreds of" Black workers at its plant have been subject to racial discrimination.
Insider reached out to Tesla for comment but a spokesperson has not responded. On Monday, Spiro argued Diaz exaggerated his claims, Bloomberg reported.
"What this case does not concern is whether or not we believe everything that occurred at Tesla's Fremont factory was right or defensible. It wasn't. Spiro stated Monday that there was no excuse. Bloomberg reports. "This case does not concern harassment in general or the problems of the country or the history, and we should all spend more time working to make it better."
—————————————————————————————————————————————
By: gkay@insider.com (Grace Kay)
Title: The second day of Tesla’s racial bias trial included testimony from a former worker who said he found feces on a factory cart
Sourced From: www.businessinsider.com/former-tesla-worker-testimony-says-found-feces-racial-harassment-trial-2023-3
Published Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2023 20:16:52 +0000
Related posts:
One week before her child was born, a Twitter worker laid off claimed that she lost her health insurance.
A lawyer incorrectly called Elon Tesla “Mr. Tweet during the Tesla shareholder trial. Musk admitted it was accurate
Elon Musk announces the expansion of Tesla’s engineering center in California. It is over a year since Tesla relocated its headquarters to Texas.
Tesla is adding 3,000 employees to its Nevada Gigafactory and investing $3.6B in new technology
Leave a Reply