Tesla has paid more than $1 million to a black former worker after an arbitrator ruled the Elon Musk-owned company failed to stop supervisors from calling him the N-word.
Melvin Berry, 47, was awarded the rare discrimination victory by arbitrator Elaine Rushing, a former judge with over two decades of experience, after a closed-door proceeding on May 12.
The ruling capped years of complaints from black workers that the electric car giant turned a deaf ear to the use of racial slurs on the assembly line and was slow to clean up graffiti with swastikas and other hate symbols scrawled in common areas.
Arbitration rulings are usually kept secret, but Rushing agreed to Berry's lawyer's request to make it public.
The decision in favor of Berry and make it public was described as rare by Cliff Palefsky, a San Francisco employment lawyer who wasn't involved in the case.
Palefsky told Bloomberg: 'Racial discrimination awards are rare and it seems this was especially hard fought,' he said. Rushing 'was clearly troubled by the facts, culture at the company and the tone of the defense.'
The Tesla plant in Fremont has been described as a 'hotbed of racial behavior' by former employees
Tesla CEO Elon Musk was criticized on Twitter after announcing that Juneteenth would be recognized as a Holiday both at Tesla and SpaceX but only if employees used a vacation day
Berry, of Antioch, California, was hired by Tesla in 2015 as a materials handler. He quit less than 18 months later when a supervisor gave him longer shifts and made him push a heavier cart after Berry complained about being called the N-word, his lawsuit claimed.
Tesla said in 2017, when Berry's case had just started, that they were 'absolutely against any form of discrimination,
