A female Tesla employee has sued the Elon Musk-run electric car company in the US, accusing them of creating a hostile environment for female staff at the workplace. According to the complaint filed by Jessica Barraza (38) in a state court in Oaklandon on Thursday (November 18), the female employees who work in Tesla Inc’s Fremont, California, factory face “rampant sexual harassment”.
According to a report published by The Washington Post on Friday, November 19, Jessica Barraza, who works on the Tesla Model 3 as the production associate at the Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California, has said that the female employees are subjected to continuous harassment, with coworkers and superiors making obscene comments and gestures, “including catcalling and inappropriate physical touching” to her and other women working night shifts. She revealed that she had complained about the harassment to her supervisors and human resources but to no avail.
In the complaint, Jessica Barraza said she experienced “nightmarish” conditions as a night-shift worker at Tesla. “After almost three years of experiencing all the harassment, it robs your sense of security, it almost dehumanises you,” she was quoted as saying in the report.
The female employee at Tesla added that she suffers from panic attacks due to three years of trauma and “is afraid to return to work knowing that her body could be violated at any time with no repercussions.”
She further said that she “is on medication and therapy, and she is not the same person she used to be.”
Speaking to the American website The Verge, Barraza said: “Nearly every day for three years, my female coworkers and I were objectified, threatened, touched, and propositioned on the factory floor. I wanted to come to work, do my job, and support my family without having to endure constant sexual harassment. I felt degraded, humiliated and traumatised.”
For years, charges of discrimination at Tesla’s Fremont factory have plagued the company. It may be noted that in the month of October, Tesla Inc. was forced to pay $137 million to a former contractor who claimed he was subjected to racial discrimination as part of a hostile work environment at the same plant.
Another woman employee working at Tesla’s Fremont plant had in September alleged that she was subjected to racial and gender discrimination. The Black woman named Rebecca Spates, who joined Tesla in June 2019, had said in her complaint that she had approached the management with a complaint against a coworker accusing him of touching her buttocks.
Tesla is yet to react to Jessica Barraza’s complaint filed against the company.
