If you happen to read Tesla’s most recent blog post, you’ll think that the legal system in the U.S. is biased and unfair. The post is an email message Valerie Capers Workman, the company’s vice president of people, sent to all employees to talk about the company’s conviction in a federal court. Tesla will have to pay Owen Diaz $136.9 million for having done little to prevent racist harassment against him in Fremont.
The decision was taken by a jury held in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The amazing sum means that – if Tesla does not appeal the decision – Diaz will get $6.9 million for emotional distress and $130 million in punitive damages. Also called exemplary damages, they are meant to punish a defendant for negligence. In other words, so that any company will think twice before ignoring the subject that caused it to be convicted in the first place.
Workman watched the trial and the email message was to share what she saw. According to the executive, no witnesses confirmed anyone called Diaz a "nigger" – a slur that is deemed so depreciative that people don’t even dare to write it anymore. They prefer to refer to it as the n-word. At the same time, you often hear it in rap songs and in movies, in which afro-american characters call others “nigga” or “my nigga.” This is something Workman mentioned witnesses said: that afro-american employees at Tesla often used the word in a friendly manner between themselves.
Tesla’s VP of people also said that the company took measures all three times in which Diaz complained about racism to the company. She also admitted that he has made written complaints to the contractor that hired him and stressed that he was a contract employee, not part of Tesla’s staff. She also wrote that “he didn’t make any complaints about the n-word until after he was not hired full-time by Tesla – and after he hired an attorney.”
Photo: Tesla
Her last description of what she saw at the trial was this:
“Even though Mr. Diaz now complains about racial harassment at Fremont, at the time he said he was being harassed, he recommended to his son and daughter – while they were all living together in the same home – that they work at Tesla with him.”
The executive then wrote that they “strongly believe that these facts don’t justify the verdict reached by the jury in San Francisco.” She probably failed to mention the testimonies and other pieces of evidence that made a compelling case to prove all that Diaz claimed to have gone through in his days as an elevator operator in Fremont.
Although Tesla did not mention anything about that, Workman’s text shows that the company intends to appeal the decision. That will put a recent Elon Musk tweet to the test. The Tesla CEO said that its “policy is never to give in to false claims, even if we would lose, and never to fight true claims, even if we would win.”
Photo: Tesla
The verdict also puts Tesla’s mandatory arbitration policy in the limelight. According to Bloomberg, there have been 90 arbitrations with former employees from 2016 up to March 2021. Only 12 were judged. Tesla won 11 and lost only one: another racism-related case. Tesla paid Melvin Berry $1 million.
Although Workman said that slurs will not be tolerated at Tesla independently of “the intent or who is using them,” the company does not seem to be willing to treat that in a more transparent way.
In its DEF 14A form submitted to the U.S. SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), Tesla makes its vote recommendations for proposals presented for its next Annual Meeting of Stockholders, to be held on October 7, 2021. The company asked them to vote against all the proposals made by shareholders, including additional reporting on human rights, employee arbitration, and diversity and inclusion efforts.
Tesla policy is never to give in to false claims, even if we would lose, and never to fight true claims, even if we would win.
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