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Tesla's Toxic Culture Has Spread to Its New Plant in Austin
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/tesla-sexual-harassment-discrimination-austin/September 27, 2024
Tesla’s Toxic Culture Has Spread to Its New Plant in Austin
Allegations of sexual harassment, racial discrimination, and dangerous conditions are now surfacing at another Tesla factory.
Bryce Covert
JoAn Rogers started working at Tesla’s Gigafactory plant in Austin, Texas, two years ago. “It sounded interesting. It was something different,” the 59-year-old said, and Tesla paid her $18.50 an hour to start out, which Rogers felt was decent pay. Rogers commuted an hour by car each way from her house to the plant, but she still arrived on time. She worked hard, getting good evaluations. “I gave those people 100 percent of me,” she said.
At first, she liked the job. But this past March, her area in a part of the plant called the general store, where workers received package deliveries, got a new, male supervisor. Soon Rogers noticed that any time he was near her—whether walking toward her or standing next to her—he touched and adjusted his penis in her sightline. It happened daily.
Rogers had never experienced sexual harassment from a coworker or supervisor, not even when she worked in a prison. So she asked her lead—a staff member who oversaw her team—to say something so that the supervisor would stop. As far as she could tell, the lead didn’t address the issue with the supervisor. Instead, she started getting threatened with write-ups for things that weren’t her fault. So she escalated the situation, first up the chain of command and then to human resources. But human resources “sent me right back around to the same people giving me problems,” she said. “They direct you to go back to your abuser. They won’t fix anything.” People in charge of her team took her aside to tell her that it was only going to hurt her if she talked to anyone other than them about what was happening.
Two other women complained about the same behavior, and still, nothing was done, she said. Then the man sexually harassing her started to write her up for “everything that I did,” she said. “He just made life miserable.” Tesla policy, she and other workers have told The Nation, is that someone with a write-up on their file can’t be promoted or receive a raise or bonus, which prevented her from moving somewhere else in the plant. “He wrote me up so I could not leave the department,” she said. “It was a nightmare.”
Tesla is on the cutting edge of the green economy, by far the top maker of American electric vehicles. But despite its being such an advanced company, its culture appears to be stuck in a different century. One reason may be that it gets set at the top by a man with a long history of questionable behavior. CEO Elon Musk himself has been accused of sexual harassment. He named his cars the Models S, 3, X, and Y to spell “sexy,” which he then emblazoned on the seat of red satin shorts. In September, after pop artist Taylor Swift endorsed Democratic candidate Kamala Harris for president, he targeted her on his social media platform X with threats of sexual assault.
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