Working in a Tesla Factory Sounds Like a Nightmare

Tesla has come below hearth this summer season as a consequence of lawsuits from staff alleging abusive environments to the feds lastly catching up with Autopilot investigations to the standard complicated frat boy antics of Pricey Chief Elon Musk.

An in-depth look from Rolling Stone on the sexual harassment allegedly skilled by seven ladies at Tesla’s Fremont, California, manufacturing unit argues that maybe the sniggering, overtly sexual, high-school degree jokes and concepts in Musk’s tweets and company actions are a tacit approval of a downright humiliating and terrifying office for, Black folks, homosexual folks and girls:

Elon Musk is Tesla, and Tesla is Elon Musk. This has been true because the South African turned CEO and wrested management of the electric-car firm from its founders in 2008. The board just isn’t forcing Musk’s hand. (It was Musk who determined Tesla would transfer its company HQ from California to Texas.) At instances he might be so hands-on that he has overnighted on the Fremont, California, manufacturing unit the place the vehicles are manufactured. Musk’s tweets could make Tesla inventory rise and fall. The private and the company are inseparable.

This isn’t in dispute.

This summer season was a busy one for Musk. He determined to purchase after which determined to not purchase Twitter. He fathered youngsters Quantity 9 and Quantity 10 with a feminine govt at one other of his firms. (Concurrently, Musk’s father, Errol, admitted to having fathered a second youngster along with his stepdaughter.) His third youngster disowned him. He denied concurrently that he broke up the wedding of the co-founder of Google and that he supplied to purchase a flight attendant a horse in alternate for an erotic therapeutic massage.

Reporter Stephen Roderick at Stone went by means of court docket filings from each Tesla and the ladies suing the corporate, in addition to spoke to 5 of the plaintiffs in his exhaustive analysis into the tradition at Tesla. Whereas Stone did give Tesla an opportunity to remark by way of the corporate’s lawyer, it solely obtained a “no remark.” Tesla has not maintained a press workplace since 2020.

What Roderick discovered have been really harrowing tales of fixed inappropriate feedback and touching in a male-dominated office. Right here’s how the primary lady, Jessica Barraza, describes her breaking level after months of alleged sexual harassment:

Sooner or later, she alleges within the criticism, she scanned her badge and turned to depart, however a person had stepped up behind her and put his leg between her legs and rubbed his groin towards her. She screamed. “What the fuck?” The stranger smiled. “Oh, my dangerous.” He disappeared into the manufacturing unit. Barraza went again to her workstation, however began having a panic assault, she says. “She referred to as me early that morning,” a Tesla co-worker who says she witnessed a lot of what Barraza endured tells me. “She was simply fully distraught. She was simply damaged.”Barraza bolted the manufacturing unit, and says she instructed her supervisor over the cellphone what occurred. They instructed her to take her scheduled days off and so they’d look into it. (In response to Tesla’s filings, her supervisor and a co-worker dispute her account. Each say they supplied to assist her, and in addition instructed her she shouldn’t have left the manufacturing unit with out telling somebody.) 

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The tales from the ladies are fairly horrible, and all are backed up with affidavits from different who witnessed the abuse. Rolling Stone requested one other plaintiff, Alisa Blickman, if she thought Musk’s conduct contributed to the surroundings of abuse:

I ask her if she thought Musk’s slavish devotion to frat-boy humor contributed to Tesla employees saying no matter they wished to ladies.

“In fact,” she says. “There are folks in that manufacturing unit who see him as a god. If he talks like that, they know they will, too.”

There isn’t any proof suggesting that Musk knew in regards to the alleged harassment occurring at Tesla’s Fremont manufacturing unit earlier than the ladies filed their lawsuits. However for a man who claims to be so hands-on, it’s onerous to think about he wouldn’t have picked up on complaints in regards to the allegedly pervasive tradition. And if he didn’t know, why didn’t he know? 

Tesla has submitted its personal affidavits to the nation of those ladies’s accounts, however there may be an simple consistency of the complaints by employees at Fremont. Your entire report will depart you feeling gut-punched, but it’s well worth your time.