Tesla, Inc will have to pay out US$137 million to a Black former employee who said that he was subjected to racial abuse at the tech giant’s San Francisco Bay area factory.

The anguish Owen Diaz was subjected to during his time with the company appeared to have resonated with the jury in San Francisco, as the ruling went in his favour.

He was awarded US$6.9 million in damages for emotional distress he endured, before eventually quitting, and US$130 million in punitive damages, said his attorney, Lawrence A. Organ.

Diaz, who was a contracted elevator operator, said he was subjected to racial harassment and a hostile work environment, where the reckless use of ‘the N-Word’ was hurled at him at every turn.

In the lawsuit Diaz filed against the company, he alleges that, while working at Tesla’s Fremont plant in 2015 and 2016, he was harassed and faced “daily racist epithets”.

Diaz also accused supervisors of failing to act after he reported the harassment he was suffering at the hands of other employees.

“It took four long years to get to this point,” Diaz told the New York Times. “It’s like a big weight has been pulled off my shoulders.”

Organ, of the California Civil Rights Law Group, told the Times: “It’s a great thing when one of the richest corporations in America has to have a reckoning of the abhorrent conditions at its factory for Black people.”

For claims such as this, the company requires employees to resolve disputes through mandatory arbitration, which the firm has rarely lost.

BLOWBACK COULD DAMAGE TESLA REPUTATION

Diaz, who was contracted through a staffing agency, didn’t have to sign an arbitration agreement.

Tesla, popularly known for its advanced tech cars, previously denied any knowledge of the alleged racist conduct by any of its nearly 10,000 employees at the plant.

The blowback for the company could leave a dent in its reputation, if the award is upheld. 

Just in May of this year, an arbitrator ordered Tesla to pay more than US$1 million over similar allegations by another former Fremont factory worker.

That former employee, like Diaz, alleges that co-workers would constantly shout racial slurs at him and noted management’s negligence in dealing with his complaints.