Because of improvements in the overnight shift’s productivity, he said he was put on the day shift to try to facilitate the same type of gains. He was warned there was a racial divide on that shift, with Blacks and whites working separately. But not all of his problems were with whites.
He said an Hispanic manager constantly spied on him, trying to catch him using his cell phone – even though that was part of his job, which involved making calls to resolve problems on the production floor. In one incident, he said the manager accused him of being on the phone for half an hour – until he produced phone records showing he wasn’t even using the phone at that time.
Nevertheless, when he was fired, the papers cited excessive phone use.
“I got terminated for doing my job,” said the former worker, 31, who had come to Tesla with the idea of carving out a career, with its promises of advancement. Instead, he said he found constant harassment.
“People don’t understand what it does to you mentally,” he said.
A white female who worked the day shift also thought she’d build a career at Tesla, but said she immediately encountered a white male supervisor who called her “honey.” She said she got no support when she complained to a manager.
She said she heard whites consistently refer to African Americans as “boy.” Still, things generally went OK until she went over and started working with the Black employees in the segregated workplace. That’s when things went downhill, she said, with sudden complaints about her being “lazy” or committing infractions whites routinely got away with. She said the manager even ordered someone to time her bathroom breaks.
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