Owen Diaz Wiki – Owen Diaz Biography
Owen Diaz, who is Black, claimed the electric car maker turned a blind eye to the harassment. His supervisors allegedly mocked him with racist images and used epithets against him. A San Francisco jury handed a massive $ 136.9 million verdict to a former Tesla worker Monday over claims that he was subjected to racist treatment by his supervisors. “It has been an emotional roller coaster,” said the plaintiff, Owen Diaz, in an interview with The Daily Beast on Monday night. “The jury knew that this is not just for me; This verdict is for everyone who works at Tesla. This is his way of putting Elon Musk on notice. ”
“[I] had supervisors who would tell me, ‘Nr, hurry up and push the button’; ‘Nr, get these batteries out of the elevator.’ And they would also tell me, ‘N —– s are not shit,’ ”he said. The verdict included $ 6.9 million in compensatory damages and $ 130 million in punitive damages, according to legal publication Law360. It was not immediately clear what percentage of those funds would go to Diaz’s attorneys, or if Tesla could reduce the payment on appeal. Representatives for Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment; an attorney for the company declined to comment on the verdict when asked by The Wall Street Journal.
Jury orders Tesla to pay $137 million
A jury ordered Tesla to pay $ 137 million to Owen Diaz, a former black employee who accused the automaker of ignoring the racial abuse he faced while working there, his attorney, Lawrence Organ, said late Monday. It’s a great thing when one of America’s richest corporations has to take into account the aberrational conditions in its factory for blacks, ”Organ of the California Civil Rights Law Group said in an interview.
The jury’s decision, in federal court in San Francisco, was previously reported by Bloomberg News. Attorneys for Tesla did not immediately provide comment. In an interview, Diaz said that he was relieved by the jury’s decision. It took four long years to get to this point, ”he said Monday night. “It’s like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders.”
Diaz said he worked as an elevator operator at the Tesla factory in Fremont, California, for about a year in 2015 and 2016. There, he said, a supervisor and other colleagues repeatedly referred to him using racial slurs. He also said employees had drawn swastikas and scratched a racial epithet on a bathroom and left disparaging cartoon pictures of black children at the factory. Despite repeated complaints, the company did little to address the behavior, he said.
“It’s not like they are eliminating offensive behavior, they would just let people keep adding and adding,” he said.
After deliberating for about four hours, the jury agreed with Diaz’s claim that Tesla had created a hostile work environment by failing to address the racism he faced, Organ said. The vast majority of the award, $ 130 million, was punitive damages to the company. The rest was due to the emotional distress Diaz suffered, Organ said.
Despite the abuse he himself faced, Diaz, said he reached a breaking point when he witnessed similar racist epithets directed at his son, Demetric, who got a job, his first, at the company with the help of Diaz. . My son saw how they broke his father in front of him, ”said Díaz. In an internal email to Tesla staff obtained by Mr. Organ and shared with The Times, Valerie Capers Workman, a human resources executive, downplayed the allegations in the lawsuit.
In addition to Mr. Diaz, three other witnesses (all non-Tesla employees) testified at trial that they regularly heard racial slurs (including the N-word) at the Fremont factory, ”he wrote. “While everyone agreed that the use of the N-word was not appropriate in the workplace, they also agreed that most of the time they thought the language was used in a ‘friendly’ way and generally by colleagues African Americans “.
The company, he wrote in the email, responded to Diaz’s complaints, fired two contractors, and suspended another. Tesla doesn’t think the facts justify the verdict, he wrote but acknowledges that the company “wasn’t perfect” in 2015 and 2016. “We’re not perfect yet,” he added. “But we have come a long way. Diaz sued Tesla along with his son and another former black employee, but only the elder Diaz’s claims made it to trial. It was not immediately clear if Tesla planned to appeal the decision.
Diaz expressed frustration that Musk, who serves as CEO of both Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX, has not reached out to him to apologize for the alleged mistreatment. “Elon hasn’t called me, he hasn’t sent me a letter, a text message, written in the sky, nor did he send one of those spaceships to say I’m sorry,” he said.
Diaz’s case was previously highlighted in a 2018 exhibit in The New York Times, which documented a pattern of alleged harassment and discrimination at Tesla. The company denied wrongdoing and said it strives to “provide a respectful work environment for all employees and do everything possible to prevent misconduct.”
Monday’s verdict comes on the heels of a separate decision against Tesla involving racial misconduct. In August, the company was reportedly forced to pay approximately $ 1 million to an employee who said his supervisors had called him the n-word. Other similar lawsuits have been filed in recent years; Tesla has consistently denied wrongdoing.
Diaz said he is considering using part of his pay to start a business, with plans to hire former prisoners and the homeless. “They don’t have a support system,” he said. “They feel like they are trapped in the system. First, however, he headed home to sleep. On Tuesday, he planned to go fishing or tend his garden. Squash and zucchini, he said, have been feeling neglected.
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