Telsa to pay $137 million for discriminating against black employees

Mdunge Skhumbuzo

Telsa has to pay $137 million damages to a former employee Owen Diaz, who accused the company of turning a blind eye to the discrimination and racial abuse at the company’s plant-based in California. The Fransico federal court awards the judgment on Tuesday morning.

The Co-founder and CEO of Telsa company, Elon Musk, was born in South Africa with the mixed blood of ‘Maye Musk’ (the Canadian mother) and ‘Errol Musk’ (the South African father) in Pretoria. When Elon Musk grew up, he then acquired state citizenship in the United States and Canada, which is the birth origin of his mother.

In the lawsuit, Owen Diaz, who worked as an elevator at Telsa factory in California, said a supervisor and other white colleagues repeatedly referred to him with racial slurs.
“ The employees scratched a racial epithet in a bathroom stall and left drawings of derogatory caricatures of black children around the factory. Despite complaining, the company did very little to address the behavior.” Owen said.

Three other witnesses (all non-Tesla contract employees) had testified that they heard regular slurs (including the N-wors) on the factory floor.
“Even though we knew that the use of N-word was not appropriate in the workplace, but most of the time, we also thought the language was used in a friendly manner and usually by African-American colleagues.”

The lawyer of Owen, Diaz Lawrence, said he is pleased about the judgment. “It a great thing when one of the richest corporations in America has to have a reckoning of the abhorrent conditions at the factory for black people.”

In the category cost: Owen was awarded $6.9million for emotional distress, and the other $130 million was for punitive measures against Telsa.