Ex-workers sue Tesla over racist drawings, slurs at Fremont factory

Tesla employees work on a Model S cars in the Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., Thursday, May 14, 2015. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu) Tesla employees work on a Model S cars in the Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., Thursday, May 14, 2015. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu) Photo: Jeff Chiu/AP Photo: Jeff Chiu/AP Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close Ex-workers sue Tesla over racist drawings, slurs at Fremont factory 1 / 10 Back to Gallery

Three former Tesla factory workers are suing the Bay Area automaker for abuse, racism and harassment they say they experienced on the job.

The men, all of whom are black, filed a lawsuit Monday in Alameda County that calls the company a “hotbed for racist behavior” and accuses Tesla supervisors and workers of using racial epithets and drawing a Jim Crow-era caricature of black children on cardboard boxes inside the company’s Fremont factory.

Tesla has denied those claims.

“There are over 33,000 people working at Tesla, and given our size, we recognize that unfortunately at times there will be cases of harassment or discrimination in corners of the company,” a Tesla spokesman said. “In situations where Tesla is at fault, we will never seek to avoid responsibility. But in this instance, from what we know so far, this does not seem to be such a case.”

Lamar Patterson and father and son Owen Diaz and Demetric Diaz were contractors, hired to work at Tesla by third-party companies.

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According to the lawsuit, Demetric Diaz, who worked as a production associate at the Tesla factory, complained to the staffing agency about racial slurs being hurled at him by co-workers “on a regular basis,” but the company did nothing. He was fired shortly after complaining about the abuse to a Tesla supervisor in December 2015, the lawsuit states.

“Demetric believed that his employment was terminated because he objected to the racist harassment and discrimination,” the document says.

Patterson and the elder Diaz both quit in 2016 after suffering or witnessing similar abuse and deciding that enough was enough, according to the legal filing. Both men said they were told their supervisor at Tesla would “look into the issue,” but no action was ultimately taken.

Tesla said it was unaware of these complaints — and that the company only learned of them after being contacted by two media outlets who were covering the lawsuit.

California Civil Rights Group, the law firm representing the three plaintiffs, sued Tesla earlier this year in a similar case of alleged racial abuse at the company’s Fremont factory.

Tesla said the company had previously refused lead attorney Larry Organ’s “demand for a seven-figure payment in order to resolve the matter,” so he filed a lawsuit.

None of the plaintiffs in this case has filed complaints with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing, both agencies that handle at-work issues of discrimination and harassment.

“Thus far, the only somewhat relevant evidence we have found is an email from Owen Diaz to his supervisor from October 2015 in which Mr. Diaz claimed that a co-worker was yelling and making aggressive comments,” the Tesla spokesman said. “That email made no mention of the use of any racist language or epithets.”

This lawsuit marks the latest labor dispute Tesla has faced this year, and the second lawsuit alleging racist conditions inside its factory. Tesla fired hundreds of workers last week after poor performance reviews that may have been related to what CEO Elon Musk called “production bottlenecks” on the company’s Model 3 car.

Earlier this year, the National Labor Relations Board filed an official complaint against Tesla, accusing the auto-tech company of violating their workers’ rights by suppressing efforts to unionize. A hearing before an NLRB judge in Oakland is scheduled to start on Nov. 14.

Marissa Lang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mlang@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Marissa_Jae