Tesla | Elon Musk's car firm to pay ex-worker £2.6m over racial abuse at work

Tesla has been ordered to pay more the equivalent of £2.6million to an ex-employee who was subjected to racial slurs and harassment in the workplace.

A jury in the US ruled that the electric carmaker, headed up by Elon Musk, must pay $3.2million to Owen Diaz, a black former employee who worked as a lift operator at the firm’s plant in San Francisco between 2015 and 2016.

Diaz had accused Tesla of failing to act when he repeatedly complained to managers that employees at the Fremont, California, factory frequently used racist slurs and scrawled swastikas, racist caricatures and epithets on walls and work areas.

The verdict came after a week-long retrial – the lawsuit was first launched by Diaz in 2017, and in 2021 he was awarded $137 million by a different jury. A judge agreed with that jury that Tesla was liable but said the award was excessive.