A Tesla manufacturing worker in Fremont, California, has filed a lawsuit against the Elon Musk-led firm, alleging that women are subjected to "nightmarish conditions of rampant sexual harassment," the Washington Post reported on Friday.
Jessica Barraza, a 38-year-old mother of two, filed the complaint in Alameda County Superior Court, reportedly claiming that she has been employed by Tesla since October 2018 and has been subjected to "near-daily sexually harassing comments and touching" from coworkers, supervisory leads, and even supervisors themselves.
Barraza, who reportedly is said to work nights at the factory, has been receiving obscene remarks from male coworkers, including: "She's got fat a-t—ies," "She's got cakes!" "That bitch hella thick," "Go ahead, sexy," and "She has a fat a*s," "Damn, girl!" and “Oh, she looks like a coke bottle,” and “Girl has an onion booty," among many others.
Male coworkers allegedly pressed "their groins or hands against her back-side" on a regular basis, according to the report, and such events were attributed to working in close quarters.
Barraza repeatedly complained to management and HR, who failed to take any action, and she finally broke down in September after having "a severe panic attack."
As a result, Barraza “is afraid to return to work knowing that her body could be violated at any time with no repercussions,” the complaint says, per the report. “She is on medication and in therapy, and she is not the same person she used to be.”
Barraza reportedly claimed that Tesla's workplace culture is impacted from the top down, citing a joking tweet by CEO Elon Musk about founding a new university and naming it Texas Institute of Technology and Science, or TITS.
“That doesn’t set a good example for the factory — it almost gives it like an … ‘he’s tweeting about it, it has to be OK,'" she is quoted as saying. “It’s not fair to myself, to my family, to other women who are working there.”
The action comes as Tesla is already facing a $137 million payment in favor of another ex-Tesla employee who claimed he was subjected to widespread racism and multiple uses of racial slurs at the Fremont factory. Tesla has filed an appeal against the order.
And in August, Tesla paid out more than $1 million to a Black former employee who won a lawsuit alleging that his bosses used the "N-word" against him at the same plant.