Tesla Accused of Race-Based Discrimination, Retaliation by Former HR Manager

By Simon Alvarez Teslarati

Tesla is currently facing a new race-based discrimination lawsuit, this time from a former human resources manager at the Fremont Factory in California. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

The plaintiff in the case, Karen Draper, 47, is claiming she was terminated for refusing to unlawfully fire a Latina employee who was targeted by a White supervisor. Draper, an AfricanAmerican, was hired in February 2022 to manage a team of HR personnel at Tesla’s Fremont factory.

Per the complaint, Draper faced issues seven months into her tenure when a Latina production supervisor was granted medical leave. A White manager, who allegedly harbored a bias against the supervisor due to her ethnicity and gender, wanted the production supervisor terminated during her leave.

The lawsuit noted Draper’s efforts to stop the illegal termination of the production supervisor put her in direct conflict with the manager. Both the manager pushing for the firing and the production supervisor involved reportedly worked in the Fremont Factory’s Model Y line, per a report from The Mercury News.

“The Model Y production managers wielded a lot of institutional power within the company and frequently held face-to-face meetings with Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk. Musk frequently traveled to Tesla’s Fremont production facility to walk the Model Y manufacturing line and interact directly with production floor employees and production managers. There was, and remains, constant pressure to keep the Model Y’s sales trajectory high,” the complaint noted.

Draper further alleged when HR staff working under her direction attempted to inform the manager that firing the supervisor without due cause would expose Tesla to legal action, the manager reportedly reacted in a loud and aggressive manner. The plaintiff later met with the manager, and he proved “loud, rude, rabid and intransigent.” The lawsuit claimed after Draper brought the matter to her direct manager, Tesla opened an investigation against her instead.

Draper also claimed her managers, during discussions about the dispute, used racial stereotypes against her, dubbing her an “angry Black woman” and accusing her of “playing the race card.” She noted two months after she refused to terminate the production supervisor, she was ousted from her post at the company. The reason behind Draper’s termination was reportedly listed as “performance issues,” even though Musk reportedly promoted her personally in June of the previous year.

Draper’s lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, accuses Tesla of retaliation, race-based discrimination and wrongful termination.

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Source: ASE Education Foundation

By Iulian Dnistran InsideEVs

A Rivian R1T owner from Ohio was involved in a fender bender that ended up costing about half the price of the truck to repair.

Chris Apfelstadt posted his story on the Rivian Electric Vehicle Discussion page on Facebook, where he said he was rear-ended in his red R1T in early February, but the airbags didn’t deploy and the collision happened at a relatively low speed. He exchanged insurance information with the driver who hit his truck and got a check for $1,600 from the other driver’s insurance company for the repairs to his pickup. But as he later found out, it was nowhere near enough.

Apfelstadt contacted Rivian, which instructed him to go to one of the three certified body shops in Ohio. He chose K-Ceps which, according to him, has a 70,000-square-foot facility dedicated to EV repairs.

The shop mechanics were and meticulously thorough with the repair process, documenting each step with photographs, but for some undisclosed reason, they disassembled most of the R1T’s rear section, including removing the rear window. In the end, the repair bill was more than $42,000.

This led some commenters to say something fishy was going on.

“This is 100% insurance fraud on behalf of this authorized repair facility,” one commenter said. “Clearly they are taking advantage of the fact this is an extremely new platform to justify egregious costs. Unless it takes 300 hours to remove the bed and rear glass (for no reason at all it would seem) and reassemble how in the world is this a 42k dollar repair? I’ve seen [Lamborghini] Aventadors have entire rear carbon sections repaired and repainted for less than that…” The owner of the damaged Rivian said the body shop did “an incredible job” and his R1T “looks as nice as the day it was shipped.”

He concluded his post by saying he’ll try to fight the other driver’s insurance company to cover his losses, adding the insurance policy maxes out at $50,000, which is very close to the final expense sheet, considering he also had a rental car during the repair.