Tesla accused of racial segregation at Fremont factory

Tesla has been accused of racial discrimination and flagrant harassment at its Fremont plant in California.

According to a report from Reuters, the US state’s civil rights regulator has filed a lawsuit against Tesla – claiming the company engaged in a culture of segregation in which African American workers were grouped together and assigned the most physically demanding jobs.

Complainants also allege offensive graffiti was found throughout the factory and not removed for months at a time, while supervisors and managers touted racist slurs.

“I [tried] to speak out about this and the egregious safety violations, only to get threatened and eventually terminated for seeking a job elsewhere,” former Tesla employee Weylin Webber wrote on Twitter.

Another claims they witnessed Black and African American workers cleaning the floors on their hands and knees, with other workers were allegedly never subjected to the same treatment.

The lawsuit comes months after a jury awarded US$137 million (AU$191.7 million) to a former Tesla worker following a year of racially-motivated harassment at the Fremont facility.

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Tesla's production facility in Fremont, California.

“After receiving hundreds of complaints from workers, the [California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH)] found evidence that Tesla’s Fremont factory is a racially segregated workplace where Black workers are subjected to racial slurs and discriminated against in job assignments, discipline, pay and promotion, creating a hostile work environment,” department director Kevin Kish said in statement.

In a blog post published prior to the action being filed, Tesla said it “strongly opposes all forms of discrimination and harassment,” but questioned the validity of the lawsuit.

“Over the past five years, the DFEH has been asked on almost 50 occasions by individuals who believe they were discriminated against or harassed to investigate Tesla,” the company wrote.

“On every single occasion, when the DFEH closed an investigation, it did not find misconduct against Tesla.”

The carmaker said it will be requesting the court pause the case and take “other steps to ensure the facts and evidence will be heard”.