Working conditions at Tesla’s manufacturing plant in Fremont, California, have allegedly gone from bad to worse, with sexual assaults aboard company shuttle buses, drug and alcohol use onsite, all-out brawls breaking out between employees and “prevalent” bigotry – including widespread use of the N-word, a bombshell lawsuit reveals.
In a 159-page federal lawsuit filed Thursday and obtained first by The Independent, Ozell Murray, a former Fresno police officer in charge of security at the 22,000-person factory, claims he and his team “routinely” seized cocaine and fentanyl onsite, confiscated guns discovered in the building, investigated “acts of sexual deviance” on Tesla grounds, and, at regular intervals, “pulled employees off the manufacturing line and sent them home for being alcohol-intoxicated and high on drugs.”
Those who reported the issues were fired over bogus charges or forced to resign, according to Murray’s complaint, to which several of his ex-colleagues signed on as co-defendants.
“Healthy profits have always been more important to the Company than a healthy working environment,” the complaint alleges. “For Tesla, more bodies on the manufacturing line meant more vehicles flying out the factory door – no matter how unclean the hands were that were assembling those cars.”
Tesla’s Model Y, Model S, Model 3 and Model X lines are manufactured in Fremont. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Tesla in 2023 over allegations of unbridled racism at its Fremont plant. This spring, Tesla settled a lawsuit brought by a Black employee at the Fremont facility who accused a manager of greeting her by saying, “Welcome to the plantation,” and, “Welcome to the slave house.”
A Tesla spokesperson did not respond on Friday to a request for comment.
The complaint against Tesla, which was brought by Murray and former Tesla HR execs Linda Peloquin, Adam Chow, Tiara Paulino, Sharnique Martin and Gregory Vass, says Tesla CEO, and erstwhile presidential “First Buddy.” Elon Musk – presently America’s least-likable public figure, according to Gallup – was personally involved in many of the Fremont factory’s hiring and firing decisions.
It goes on to describe a significant portion of the carmaker’s “hastily-hired and poorly-vetted” workforce in Fremont as “blatant racists and misogynists.”
“Many who have worked there have likened the workplace to the Jim Crow South; an environment in which Black employees and brown-skinned workers are besieged with constant racial abuse, stereotyping, and hostility – including with repeated use of inarguably the most brutal and degrading racial slur in the history of humanity: N****r,” according to the complaint. “… Black Tesla employees have reported regularly encountering nooses on desks and other equipment as well as seeing the word ‘N****r’ graffitied on walls, in bathroom stalls, elevators – even on new Tesla vehicles rolling off the production line.”
The complaint filed by Murray and his former coworkers alleges that the “use of the ‘N-word’ was prevalent” at Fremont.
In late 2021, one of Murray’s direct reports, a Black security officer who was also a former cop, “was victimized when a Tesla employee called her a n****r,” the complaint states.
“Murray’s colleague was so distressed by the incident and the impunity with which the word was used toward her… that she had to take a medical leave from work to recover from the trauma,” according to the complaint. “Yet, instead of offering encouragement, Murray’s supervisor… counseled him that Murray should be informing all new Black security personnel that the use of the ‘N-word’ was simply engrained [sic] in the culture at Tesla and, so, Murray should only be bringing aboard that are willing to accept and acquiesce to the prevalence of that word in the workplace.”
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In another incident indicative of the “racial tension and toxicity” at Tesla’s Fremont plant, the complaint says a Black assembly-line employee working on a vehicle called out a warning after he spotted a coworker about to do something that could potentially damage the car.
According to the complaint, the coworker, who was white, “responded by angrily yelling back, ‘Do you want to hang by a tree?’”
Supervisors were also known to abuse Tesla’s “zero tolerance” policy at the time for drug and alcohol use on the job, the complaint goes on. It says that if a higher-up suspected an employee was under the influence, they could report the person to security and Murray or someone from his team would then escort them off the premises “without question.” However, in “many instances,” the supposedly intoxicated employee did not appear that way to the security officer tasked with removing them, according to the complaint.
“As it turned out, many supervisors and managers were merely using the policy as a means to retaliate against their subordinates – and, in particular, when a line employee had turned down the supervisor or manager’s sexual advances,” the complaint states. “Or, when the manager or supervisor wanted to retaliate against someone because of their race or ethnicity. Or, when the manager or supervisor wanted to retaliate against someone because of a complaint an employee had lodged against them.”
Yet, the complaint claims incidents such as these were swept under the rug by one specific Tesla manager who had “an irrational fixation on fostering the delusion that the environment and culture at Tesla is one of tolerance and innovation, rather than racism and retaliation.”
Because of sky-high demand for Tesla vehicles at the time, if a violent or racist Tesla employee were to actually get fired for cause, they were regularly “loopholed” back in via a temp agency, according to the complaint.
This, the filing says, allowed them to bypass the usual background check, and “oftentimes” meant an employee who had been previously victimized “had to actually resume working with their attacker and tormentor.”
One loopholed employee who had been let go for workplace violence returned to Fremont and promptly attacked another colleague, the complaint states.
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For his part, the complaint says Murray “was outspoken” with Tesla management about safety and security concerns in Fremont. For that, he wound up “summarily fired under the pretextual guise of ‘poor performance,’” even though he had never once been disciplined and was promoted five times in his six years with Tesla.
Murray’s co-defendants, Karen Draper, Linda Peloquin, Adam Chow, Gregory Vass, Tiara Paulino and Sharnique Martin, all endured similar experiences, being drummed off the payroll for supposed “poor performance,” according to the complaint.
All of them had brought up serious concerns about issues at Tesla, or had investigated and substantiated employee wrongdoing, and were subsequently “outright fired” for doing so, or resigned before they could be terminated, the complaint alleges.
None had ever received any negative performance reviews, according to the complaint.
Murray and his co-defendants are suing Tesla on five causes of action, including retaliation, wrongful termination and failure to prevent unlawful discrimination.
They are seeking compensatory damages, emotional distress damages, punitive damages and exemplary damages to be determined by a jury, plus attorneys’ fees and court costs.
