California Civil Rights Agency sued TeslaThis week the allegations of racism and harassment against Black workers at the car assembly plant in California and elsewhere in the state were made. Company warnedThis lawsuit was brought up in the company’s annual financial filing Monday.

California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing claims it launched a three year-long investigation and received hundreds of complaints by Tesla employees.

According to the agency, it has evidence that Tesla is among others:

• Black workers were not allowed to hold the lower levels of the company’s hierarchy and were paid less than White employees and their colleagues.
• Black workers weren’t allowed to be promoted or trained, and were punished more severe than the rest.
• The company employs Black employees who are more physically strenuous in their work.
• Black workers complained about their treatment by supervisors, colleagues who used racist epithets against them to intimidate or downgrade them.
• Black workers protesting “the widespread use of racial insults on the assembly lines” were almost ignored.
• Unreasonably slow in moving to “cleanup racist graffiti with Swastikas and Other Hate symbols scrawled on common areas.”

Tesla is being asked by the agency to stop unequal treatment of Black contractors and employees, as well as to compensate the DFEH for damages. This will allow them to be made whole and reinstate those workers that were unfairly fired.

Tesla created a company blog postOn Wednesday, they called the suit “misguided” in a statement that was released ahead of its filing.

DFEH focuses on Tesla’s treatment of Black and/or African American citizens, but not Latino or Asian employees who sued Tesla in the state alleging racism.

The DFEH claims that Tesla does not have any Black executives and that only 3% employees at Fremont’s car plant are Black. However, 20 percent of factory employees at Fremont’s Fremont assembly plant for vehicle production are Black. This means that Blacks are not “severely represented” in high-paying roles and have more power in the company.

Tesla has not disclosed this detail in their annual reports. diversity reports.

Tesla was also accused by the agency of not complying with state laws that required companies to provide antidiscrimination and antiharassment training to employees and to investigate complaints regarding all workers, full-time contractors included.

According to the DFEH, “Tesla did not create procedures for co-ordinating investigations into racial harassment involving staffing agency workers and didn’t give supervisors standardized training on how to conduct investigations.”

Tesla and DFEH didn’t immediately reply to our requests for comment.