On the Tesla production line: Dozens of former employees say they faced catcalls, groping, slurs, and harassment on the job

• In 46 lawsuits, former and current employees allege they were targeted and harassed based on gender and race.
• Tesla has pushed back and filed to move the majority of the cases to private arbitration.
• Seven experts told Insider the number of lawsuits should be a cause for concern for the carmaker.

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lisa Blickman said her coworkers rated women, took photos of a female colleague’s back-side, and made comments like, “I’d like to bend her over and spread her cheeks.” Alex Corella said his colleagues called him “homophobic slurs” and joked that he performed oral sex on his supervisor. 

Terrance Dobbins said workers told him he worked at the “KFC and watermelon patch.” They also made “sexually and racially offensive statements,” including jokes about “pegging,” he said.

And Jessica Brooks said “catcalls” and groping got so bad on the job that she started stacking boxes around her workstation “to discourage men from coming and whistling at and ogling her.”

These are just a handful of accounts from more than 40 lawsuits filed against Tesla by former and current employees in the past five years alleging the company fosters a sexist and racist work culture. Tesla is currently attempting to push three of the cases, and many others, into private arbitration. Dobbins’ case was moved into arbitration in September. 

Tesla founder Elon Musk built the electric-car maker as part of his utopian vision for the future. The company’s cars save lives, Musk has said, and he’s set out to revolutionize manufacturing, describing an “alien dreadnought” dream factory, where all parts of the carmaking process are automated. 

But for now, Tesla must rely on its army of workers, some of whom say these futuristic dreams are stifled in a “Jim Crow Era,” “frat house” environment that allows discrimination to fester.

Together, the lawsuits paint a picture of a workplace where slurs, groping, and threats were commonplace, and where the human-resources department regularly failed to address workers’ concerns. In some cases, employees who turned to management for help said they were reprimanded or terminated, according to the lawsuits.

“After almost three years of experiencing all the harassment, it robs your sense of security — it almost dehumanizes you,” Jessica Barraza, who filed a lawsuit against Tesla in November saying she was sexually harassed on a “near-daily” basis, told The Washington Post. (Insider attempted to contact all of the former employees cited in this story, and they either declined to comment or did not respond.) Tesla has filed to push the case into private arbitration.

Musk did not respond to requests for comment. 

“Tesla believes that the appropriate place to respond is before the tribunal that will hear the actual facts and evidence, not in the press,” Tesla said in a statement to Insider, declining to comment on individual cases.

In the vast majority of the lawsuits, the carmaker has fought back and pushed for private arbitration. At least three cases have been dismissed and three more have been settled in court. Most others have been moved to private arbitration or are pending a hearing on Tesla’s motion to compel arbitration. Meanwhile, Tesla said in October that it is actively working to “ensure that every employee feels that they can bring their whole self to work.”

While Tesla has largely been successful in deflecting the lawsuits and preventing settlement details from being publicized over the past five years, there are signs of cracks in its armor. The company lost two high-profile discrimination cases — one in court and one in private arbitration — last year, and it’s now facing government scrutiny.

A flurry of lawsuits at Fremont

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esla’s sprawling 5.3-million-square-foot factory in Fremont, California, is the company’s largest manufacturing hub, where it produces hundreds of thousands of electric cars each year that sell for $46,990 to over $130,000. More than 10,000 employees work at the plant and face ambitious production targets as Tesla pushes to scale production by roughly 50% a year.

In 2021, the Fremont factory cranked out 8,550 cars per week — more vehicles than any other automotive production plant in North America, according to a report from Bloomberg. Tesla is planning to ramp up production in the coming year with new factories, and the Fremont hub is designed to serve as the model for its future plants.

As Tesla’s output and workforce have grown, so have the number of lawsuits it faces from its workers. More sexual-harassment and racial-discrimination lawsuits appear to have been filed against Tesla in 2021 than any year since it was founded 18 years ago, according to an Insider review of 46 lawsuits against Tesla, over 60% of which involve the factory. In many of these cases, women and people of color said they faced racist and sexist behavior.

Seven legal and labor experts told Insider that the sheer number of lawsuits against Tesla should be a cause for concern for the carmaker. 

“It’s an astounding number for a factory with 10,000 workers,” said Lisa Bloom, a California lawyer who has advised high-profile clients including Harvey Weinstein and taken on cases against Donald Trump, Bill O’Reilly, and Jeffrey Epstein. Bloom also told Insider she’s had conversations with a Tesla customer considering legal action against the company. 

“Most people who are victims of verbal or physical abuse are hesitant to come forward,” she said. “These kinds of lawsuits point to a deeper endemic problem and are likely the tip of the iceberg.”

Deborah Gordon, a Detroit lawyer who has worked on sexual-harassment lawsuits against companies in the United Auto Workers union, told Insider that automotive factories typically face up to a handful of sexual harassment and racial-discrimination cases per year. 

In an analysis of seven automotive manufacturing plants in the US that have similar workforce populations and production levels to Tesla’s Fremont factory — including Toyota’s facility in Georgetown, Kentucky (9,000 workers), BMW’s in Spartanburg, South Carolina (11,000 workers), Nissan’s in Smyrna, Tennessee (7,000 workers), Ford’s in Kansas City, Missouri (7,000 workers), Hyundai’s in Montgomery Alabama (3,000 workers), Stellantis’ in Sterling Heights, Michigan (6,800 workers), and General Motor’s in Spring Hill, Tennessee (3,200 workers) — Insider found a range of zero to 10 racial discrimination and sexual harassment cases filed against each facility across county, state, and federal courts over the past five years. Like Tesla, all six companies require employees to sign mandatory arbitration clauses, which could keep cases out of public view.

Tesla pushed back on Bloom’s characterization of the number as “astounding” in a statement to Insider, saying competitors have been “sued for discrimination many more times than Tesla over the last five years.”

“The claim that Tesla faces an unusual volume of suits is inaccurate and misleading,” the spokesperson said.

“Your attempt to analyze at the plant level is not a fair comparison, given that the Fremont factory is not only the largest auto assembly plant in the nation, but also has the largest US workforce,” Tesla added. “Comparing assembly plants with only a few thousand workers in states such as Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee to Tesla’s Fremont factory – located in a jurisdiction with one of the highest rates of litigation – does not make sense. Based on these differences alone, a fair review of publicly available data does not support the assertions of your experts,” Tesla added.

A GM spokesperson told Insider in a statement that Tesla’s comment on competitors’ case numbers is also “inaccurate and misleading” and that “GM has zero tolerance for workplace harassment and discrimination in any form.”

A Toyota spokesperson told Insider, “not a single employee has filed a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment or racial/gender discrimination” at the company’s largest US facility in Georgetown, Kentucky over the past five years. 

A Stellantis spokesperson said, “There is absolutely no truth to Tesla’s comments about the Sterling Heights Assembly Plant or any other plant within Stellantis’ manufacturing footprint.” 

Ford, BMW, Nissan, and Hyundai did not respond to a request for comment on the number of racial discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits that have been filed against them. 

While GM, Ford, and Stellantis are unionized in the US, Tesla’s workforce is not, and Musk himself has had scathing words for UAW and unions in general — a factor Gordon said could be contributing to the worker complaints.

“The UAW is very active in addressing these types of issues,” Gordon said. “They simply do not tolerate it. Verbal harassment is fairly common in a factory setting, but a union adds a layer of protection for workers. It allows grievances to be heard and readily addressed.”

Men represent 79% of Tesla’s total workforce and 83% of leadership, the carmaker said in a 2020 report. Vicki Schultz, a labor expert at Yale Law School, told Insider that a lack of diversity in a company’s workforce is a major “risk factor” for sexual harassment.

“The dominant group will use sexual or racial harassment to show others that they don’t belong,” Schultz said.

Tesla has said it is a “majority-minority” company. People of color make up about 60% of the company’s total workforce, according to Tesla’s latest diversity report. But while Black workers make up 10% of the US workforce, they hold only 4% of roles at the director level or higher. 

Tesla has not provided specific demographics for the Fremont factory.

Some supervisors harassed workers, lawsuits say

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ichala Curran said that during her first week at Tesla, her supervisor told her to “shake her ass,” become an exotic dancer, and tried to slap her backside.

“I just felt scared not knowing who to run to,” Curran, a former production associate in the paint department, told The Washington Post. “Knowing there’s nothing but males around me — not knowing if they might have the same mind-set of the supervisor.”

Curran is one of 24 women who have sued Tesla in the past five years alleging that they were sexually harassed, groped, or physically assaulted, and in some cases denied pay raises and promotions. Most of the plaintiffs formerly worked at the Fremont factory. Over two dozen former employees’ lawsuits said their supervisors harassed them. Tesla has filed a motion to compel Curran’s case into private arbitration and the decision is pending a court hearing in May. The remaining 23 cases have been moved to private arbitration or are pending a hearing on Tesla’s motion to compel arbitration.

Some workers’ lawsuits described supervisors’ behavior as threatening. Kristin Ortiz, a sales representative, said her supervisor would stalk her, invite her to change clothes in front of him, call her “the eye candy of the store” and on one occasion “kissed her on the cheek,” according to a lawsuit. 

Erica Cloud said in a separate suit that her manager’s behavior caused her to “fear for her safety,” as he would “hug and massage her” and refer to his penis, saying he is “big down there.” Cloud reported the behavior to HR and within several months was no longer required to work with the manager, according to her suit. 

Another former employee, Dominique Keeton, alleged in a lawsuit that her direct supervisor sent her text messages saying that he wanted to be “intimate” with her and “regularly used racial slurs and white-power language to degrade, belittle, ridicule, and dehumanize her.” Ortiz, Cloud, and Keeton’s cases have been moved into private arbitration.

Over a dozen employees’ lawsuits said their supervisors threatened their employment, and in seven cases fired them, after they rejected sexual advances or reported racist and sexist behavior to the company.

Blickman, an assembly-line worker, said in a suit that her supervisor threatened to send her to “one of the least desirable working areas” when she was not responsive to his “sexual advances,” which included “daily” back rubs and statements like, “I hear you don’t like to scream loud enough.”

Under federal and state civil-rights laws, employers are required to take reasonable steps to prevent workplace harassment. If a company has no way for employees to report harassment or does nothing to stop the harassment once it’s reported, for example, it can be held liable in court. It’s also illegal for a company to fire an employee just because they reported being harassed.

Tesla HR ignored complaints, some workers said

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ome Tesla workers said they tried to turn to the company’s HR department for help but were ignored or reprimanded. 

Eden Mederos said in a lawsuit that Tesla workers at her service station in California often joked the company’s HR function was nonexistent. She said she struggled to find contact information for the department after experiencing what she called “near-daily” harassment from coworkers, including her supervisor. After she reported it, the company held a meeting where she said the supervisor called her a “liar” and an HR rep called her accusations “aggressive,” according to her suit. 

Mederos’ attorney, David Lowe, told Insider the case has been moved to another county court and he anticipates Tesla will push for the case to be moved to private arbitration.

Of 46 lawsuits Insider reviewed, plaintiffs in 13 cases said that verbal, written, or emailed reports sent to HR resulted in either no action or minimal follow-up. Twenty-two former employees said they were fired after reaching out to HR.

DeWitt Lambert’s attorney, Lawrence Organ, told Insider that Lambert presented HR with a video in which another worker called him the N-word 22 times and detailed how he would “chop up parts of his body.” Lambert said he faced retaliation after reporting the incident and that HR “failed to investigate and reprimand the harassers.” The same video also failed to convince a private arbitrator, who said a case could not be made against Tesla for allowing employees to use the N-word when Lambert used it himself, Organ told Insider.

“I feel like everything was taken away from me,” Lambert told The New York Times. “I got everything snatched from up under me since I complained about it.”

Tesla’s legal counsel argued that Lambert’s filing involved “misplaced claims of employment discrimination, harassment, and retaliation” and that the dispute should be settled in arbitration, where it was ultimately dismissed.

A February lawsuit and three-year investigation into Tesla’s HR practices by a California civil-rights regulator found that the company’s human-resources department was “under-staffed and inadequately trained” with the ratio of HR workers to personnel 1-to-740. For comparison, the Society of Human Resources Management, the profession’s leading member association, estimates that companies in the US average over two HR employees per every 100 full-time workers. Tesla has said it is working to improve training for its employees.

“We recently rolled out an additional training program that reinforces Tesla’s requirement that all employees must treat each other with respect and reminds employees about the numerous ways they can report concerns, including anonymously,” Tesla said on its website.

Some former employees said Tesla HR personnel were hostile toward them. 

Malaisha Bivens said in a lawsuit that she met with an unidentified person she assumed was an HR representative after she reported that a fellow employee touched her inappropriately. This person “threatened” her in a “harsh tone,” and said “she would be fired if she was lying about the incident,” according to Bivens’ lawsuit. HR did not follow up about an investigation into her complaint, her lawsuit said. The case has been moved to private arbitration.

Another former employee, Kaylen Barker, said in a lawsuit that Tesla human resources asked her to sign a statement saying she was “insubordinate” after she reported that a coworker referred to her using the N-word and a sexist insult while also calling her “stupid” and “dumb” before throwing a “hot tool” at her. Tesla has yet to submit a response to the case.

“At a big company the expectation is that the HR department has a significant responsibility to ensure the law is not being broken,” Gordon said. “Based on my experience, HR departments are not completely neutral, but usually at major companies they make a concerted effort to make sure rules are followed.”

Tesla’s HR team appeared to take action against harassers in a small fraction of the lawsuits reviewed by Insider. Only four cases cited instances in which alleged harassers faced repercussions, including termination and being reassigned to another department, after physical altercations, according to the complaints.

The CEO set the tone, some workers say 

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usk is known for his hands-on approach in guiding Tesla. In 2018, the CEO said he would sleep on the factory floor and work over 120 hours a week.

Musk’s leadership style led several workers who filed lawsuits to believe that he knew about what they called a “hostile work environment” at the Fremont factory.

“We’ve had multiple witnesses that can speak to Musk’s presence at the factory, at least during the time of Lambert and Diaz’s cases,” said Organ, who represents several former workers in cases against Tesla. “It would be very hard to believe that he doesn’t know about the behavior at the factory, and yet it doesn’t seem like there’s been a clear message from Musk that this conduct is not tolerated.”

Of the cases Organ has worked on, one has been dismissed, one is ongoing, and two have won against Tesla — one in court and the other in private arbitration.

Four claimants said they contacted Musk directly about their complaints, while two more alleged his behavior on Twitter indirectly contributed toward their harassment.

Marcus Vaughn, a former employee, said he was one of multiple Black employees who contacted Musk regarding “repeated instances of race-based harassment” in 2017. Vaughn and more than 100 other former Tesla workers who are Black sued the company in a class action. In response, Musk sent an email to Fremont factory workers addressing harassment at Tesla, according to Vaughn’s suit.

“Part of not being a huge jerk is considering how someone might feel who is part of [a] historically less represented group,” Musk wrote in the email, according to the suit. “Sometimes these things happen unintentionally, in which case you should apologize. In fairness, if someone is a jerk to you, but sincerely apologizes, it is important to be thick-skinned and accept that apology.”

The class action suit was dismissed in 2021. The automaker’s counsel successfully argued “that the court should deny class certification because Tesla policy and practice is that Tesla employees are bound by the Tesla arbitration agreement.”

Vaughn’s case is ongoing in Alameda County Court. Tesla has repeatedly pushed to move the case into private arbitration and has said the suit “fails to state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action against” Tesla. Organ claims Vaughn never signed the carmaker’s mandatory arbitration agreement and the continued motions to compel arbitration are an “effort to stall.”

Musk is also known for his active online presence, in particular his Twitter persona — which ranks among the most-followed accounts on the site. The Tesla CEO’s tweets frequently spawn headlines and in some cases scrutiny from financial regulators. 

Two female Tesla ex-employees pointed to instances in which they said Musk’s behavior on Twitter contributed indirectly to their harassment, including recent tweets from the CEO in which he made a joke about creating a college with the acronym “TITS,” and dubbed his Tesla car models “S3XY.” 

Opening ‘the floodgates’

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esla’s mandatory-arbitration clause, which requires most employees to bring their claims in private arbitration instead of public court, makes it difficult to know the details of all allegations against the company. In September, Bloomberg reported that almost 90 employment-related private arbitration complaints had been filed against Tesla since 2016. The company won 11 of those cases and lost only one. Most were settled, withdrawn, or dismissed, according to Bloomberg. 

Melvin Berry, a former employee, is the only known person to win a discrimination case against Tesla in arbitration. He secured a $1 million settlement in August after a private arbitrator determined the company failed to stop Berry’s supervisors from calling him the N-word. The carmaker denied the allegations in Berry’s case, saying Tesla “is absolutely against any form of discrimination, harassment, or unfair treatment of any kind.” Tesla has not appealed the case.

Then, in October, a San Francisco federal jury ruled that Tesla must pay over $137 million in punitive damages to a former Tesla contractor, Owen Diaz. Diaz said his supervisor helped create a hostile work environment for Black workers by distributing racist sketches at work.

The company is in the process of challenging the verdict, saying the award “bears no relationship to the actual evidence at trial.” 

Helen Rella, a New York labor lawyer, told Insider a successful lawsuit, especially a landmark case like Diaz’s, could “open the floodgates” — an issue that Tesla board members have expressed concern over in the past.

“Just because there is more than one complaint against a company it does not necessarily indicate that the complaints are justified, but it certainly provides the opportunity for more workers to come forward,” Rella said. “Once a lawyer has one employee who’s willing to sue, it’s much easier to find more.”

Tesla also alluded to this, telling Insider that many of the lawsuits “have been brought by a handful of plaintiffs’ lawyers who actively solicit Tesla workers in an effort to enrich themselves, and then often plant the same sensationalized, unadjudicated allegations to get yet more clients for self-enrichment.”

Organ told Insider meanwhile that over 950 former and current Tesla employees have reached out to him with racial-discrimination claims against the carmaker.

Meanwhile, Tesla faces another looming legal battle.

In February, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing sued the company over allegations of systemic racial discrimination and harassment at its Fremont factory. The civil-rights agency said it had received “hundreds of complaints from workers.”

Tesla called the lawsuit an attack against “the last remaining automobile manufacturer in California,” and said that it “always disciplined and terminated employees who engage in misconduct, including those who use racial slurs or harass others in different ways.”

“Tesla’s brand, purportedly highlighting a socially conscious future, masks the reality of a company that profits from an army of production workers, many of whom are people of color, working under egregious conditions,” California said in its complaint. “Even after years of complaints, Tesla has continued to deflect and evade responsibility.”