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DESCRIPTION:5/25 Rally-STOP THE POISON! Speak Out At Twitter HQ To Protest Racist Union 
 Busting Elon Musk’s Control Of Social Media 
 PlatformTwitter\n\n\nWednesday May 25, 2022 12:00 Noon\nTwitter World 
 Headquarters\n1355 Market St.\nSan Francisco, CA\n\nInitiated by United 
 Front Committee For A Labor Party UFCLP\nInitial Speakers:\nCheryl 
 Thornton, SEIU 1021 SF Community Health Care Chapter Vice President, 
 Delegate To SF Labor Council\nTesla Workers \nRicardo Ortiz, UPWA\n\nThe 
 racist massacre in Buffalo, New York is the latest  bloody attack on the 
 Black community  and this is only a continuation of open racist incitement 
 and nazi ideology by Fox, Trump and the Trumpsters.  The Black, Brown, 
 Asian and Jewish communities are under direct threat as these deadly racist 
 attacks escalate.\nBillionaire Elon Musk has now decided to spend $44 
 billiion to take control of SF based Twitter and use the platform to push 
 this racist ideology. \nDespite his prolific use of twitter, he is 
 strangely silent about the Buffalo massacare and the Nazi ideology of 
 “replacement theory”. He also has  a criminal record of racist 
 terrorism at the Tesla plant in Fremont and union busting to prevent 
 workers from having a union to defend their rights on the job.\nHe also 
 illegally conspired to cover up the injuries of workers at Tesla and 
 prevented them from gettiing medical care. This is workers comp fraud but 
 has been unprosecuted.  His drive for profits mean slave labor plantation 
 conditions at the Tesla factory.\nHe has been allowed to get away with 
 these crimes because the politicians like Governor Gavin Newsom who is a 
 friend of Musk refuses to enforce the labor, workers comp and health and 
 safety laws. \nHis Fremont  factory was allowed to operate full blast 
 during the covid pandemic  even when there was a Alameda County Shelter In 
 Place Order for all businesses in the County. Sick Tesla workers who were 
 transported by buses to the Central Valley where they infected their 
 families and working class communities in the Valley as a result of 
 Musk’s criminal acts.  Newsom even caved in and said he could violate the 
 law. It is clear that Elon Musk is ABOVE THE LAW.\nWe need to stand up 
 against this racist and union buster who wants to take control of this 
 powerful global social media platform to propagate his anti-Black,  
 anti-working class ideology. The danger of a racist fascist USA is growing. 
 We need a working class political alterative that defends labor and 
 democratic rights and workers should run these platform that they 
 built.\nOn May 25, 2022 Twitter will be having a stockholders meeting.\nWe 
 Need To Speak Out And Make Our Voices Heard\n\nNo Racist Nazi Ideology On 
 Social Media\nNo Slave Labor At Tesla or Twitter!\nEnough Is Enough!\n\nTo 
 endorse and participate\ninfo(at)ufclp.org\n\nInitiated by\nUnited Front 
 Committee For A Labor 
 Party\nwww.ufclp.org\nhttps://www.facebook.com/masslaborpartyusa/\n\nColumn: 
 With Elon Musk in charge, it’s the beginning of the end for #BlackTwitter 
 \n\nhttps://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-04-25/elon-musk-buying-twitter-will-silence-black-twitter\n\n\nIt’s 
 all rather disturbing and yet somehow fitting in these doublespeak-steeped 
 times.\n\nElon Musk, the founder of a company that California is suing for 
 allegedly silencing [thousands of Black employees who complained about 
 racism, is buying a company that has given millions of Black people a 
 megaphone-like voice to complain about racism.\n\nAnd the California-hating 
 billionaire insists he’s doing it all to protect free 
 speech.\n\n“Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the 
 future of humanity are debated,” Musk said Monday, announcing that he had 
 succeeded in taking over the San Francisco-based social media company for 
 $44 billion.\n\nConsider this the beginning of the end of 
 #BlackTwitter.\nIt’s all rather disturbing and yet somehow fitting in 
 these doublespeak-steeped times.\nElon Musk, the founder of a company that 
 California is suing for allegedly silencing thousands of Black employees 
 who complainedabout racism, is buying a company that has given millions of 
 Black people a megaphone-like voice to complain about racism.\nAnd the 
 California-hating billionaire insists he’s doing it all to protect free 
 speech.\n“Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the 
 future of humanity are debated,” Musk said Monday, announcing that he had 
 succeeded in taking over the San Francisco-based social media company for 
 $44 billion.\nConsider this the beginning of the end of #BlackTwitter.\nNot 
 of Black people on Twitter but of #BlackTwitter — the community of 
 millions that figured out how to turn a nascent social media platform into 
 an indispensable tool for real-world activism, political power and 
 change\n#BlackTwitter gave us hashtags that turned into 
 movements.\n#BlackLivesMatter and #ICantBreathe became rallying cries for 
 hundreds of thousands of protesters after the 2020 murder of George Floyd 
 by Minneapolis police. And for years before that, when fewer Americans were 
 paying attention to the disproportionate number of Black women being killed 
 by police, there was #SayHerName.\nIt was #OscarsSoWhite that led to 
 pressure for changes at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 
 And let’s not forget that #MeToo, which roiled the halls of power in 
 corporations and government, was started by a Black woman.\nThere’s also 
 #BlackGirlMagic and #BlackBoyJoy, both celebrations of the beauty of 
 Blackness in a country that so often devalues it — and us.\nOn Monday, 
 the mood on #BlackTwitter was neither magical nor joyful.\n“There goes 
 #BlackTwitter — new owners will call it CRT and ban it.”\n“Um… 
 #BlackTwitter we need to schedule a meeting ASAP! Where we meeting up when 
 we leave Twitter?”\n“So, where’s the back of Twitter? Asking for 
 #BlackTwitter”\n“It was nice getting to know you all. Especially 
 everyone on #BlackTwitter. Now a white South African man owns it. Bye 
 Y’all. #RIPTwitter”\nMeredith D. Clark, an associate professor at 
 Northeastern University in Boston who studies race, media and power and is 
 working on a book about #BlackTwitter, wasn’t surprised.\n“I think you 
 will definitely see more people move off in larger waves,” she said. “I 
 think there will still be a remnant left, but you know?”\nThe problems 
 with the Twitter deal are multifold for Black people.\nFirst, there’s 
 Musk himself.\nHe’s the world’s richest person. Or, as Clark put it: 
 “This is yet another example of how we’re falling prey to oligarchies. 
 Men with billions of dollars who get to decide what our communications look 
 like.”\nHe’s also a businessman with questionable ethics. Musk’s 
 company Tesla is being sued by the California Department of Fair Employment 
 and Housing. It’s the largest racial discrimination suit ever brought by 
 the state and was filed on behalf of more than 4,000 former and current 
 employees, all of whom are Black.\nSome of those employees described their 
 experiences to The Times. They alleged that they were often the targets of 
 racist slurs by co-workers and supervisors and that Tesla segregated Black 
 workers, gave them the hardest work at the Fremont, Calif., manufacturing 
 plant and denied them promotions. And they say the company ignored their 
 complaints about the treatment.\nGiven the long-standing diversity problems 
 at tech companies, including at Twitter,this is troubling. Even more 
 concerning is the climate on Twitter itself, which — despite the content 
 moderation that happens now — is still full of racist trolls.\n“With 
 the knowledge that I have about Musk as a businessperson, and as someone 
 who seeks to have great influence over culture, I’m concerned,” Clark 
 said. “I’m concerned about some of the statements that he’s made in 
 the past and how they reflect on his character and his mind-set.”\nMonica 
 Chatman is a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit for discrimination and 
 harassment against Tesla\nBUSINESS\nBlack Tesla employees describe a 
 culture of racism: ‘I was at my breaking point’\nMarch 25, 2022\nThe 
 second problem is what Musk plans to do with Twitter.\nHe has repeatedly 
 complained about the content moderation, even though it is applied 
 sparingly and inconsistently. If he has his way, he could very likely get 
 rid of it altogether.\nProminent white supremacists who got kicked off the 
 platform for good reason could return — among them former President 
 Trump,who, through his account, helped incite the Jan. 6 insurrection at 
 the U.S. Capitol.\nPerhaps more troubling, conspiracy theories could become 
 easier to find and share and, therefore, grow in complexity and number of 
 believers.\nWe’ve already seen the effects of disinformation about 
 COVID-19 vaccines and of QAnon, including the latest tall tales linking 
 gender identity to pedophilia that are being echoed by reckless Republican 
 politicians. What happens when those conspiracy theories, bolstered by more 
 than a dash of white supremacy, escalate into violence? It happened once; 
 it can surely happen again.\nFILE - This July 9, 2019, file photo shows a 
 sign outside of the Twitter office building in San Francisco. \nConsider 
 this the beginning of the end of #BlackTwitter, the community of millions 
 that figured out how to turn a social media company into a platform for 
 real-world activism, political power and change.\n(Jeff Chiu / Associated 
 Press)\n#BlackTwitter knows this.\nOn Monday, Musk tweeted: “I hope that 
 even my worst critics remain on Twitter because that is what free speech 
 means.”\n#BlackTwitter also knows that, no, that’s not what free speech 
 means, because Twitter is a company — soon to be privately held — and 
 has no obligation under the 1st Amendment to allow racism, transphobia, 
 homophobia or misogyny to percolate through its platform.\nAnd so, rather 
 than safeguarding the “bedrock of a functioning democracy,” as Musk 
 describes free speech, he just destroyed it — because the people whose 
 tweets were the most effective at that are leaving.\n“I don’t think 
 that you’re going see the same sort of replication of a Twitter-like 
 climate or #BlackTwitter on another platform. I don’t think you’ll ever 
 get that lightning in a bottle back,” Clark said. “But I do think that 
 you will see Black people doing what we have always done. And that is bend 
 communication and other technologies to our needs and our will. And find 
 ways to thrive in those various areas of the internet.”\n\n\nElon 
 Musk’s silence on how he’d moderate the Buffalo shooting livestream is 
 deafening\nThe free speech advocate had no comment on Twitter’s scramble 
 to block videos of the mass 
 shooting\nhttps://www.theverge.com/2022/5/16/23076428/buffalo-shooting-video-elon-musk-twitter-content-moderation\nBy 
 Corin Faife@corintxt  May 16, 2022, 5:57pm EDT\nShare this story\n\nAll 
 sharing options\n\nAaron Jordan, of Buffalo, adds to a sidewalk chalk mural 
 depicting the names of the people killed at a mass shooting at Tops 
 Friendly Market in Buffalo, NY. Sunday, May 15, 2022 in Buffalo, NY. Kent 
 Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images\nOn May 14th, social media 
 platforms found themselves scrambling to deal with a livestream video of a 
 white supremacist terror attack. Yet the man who has been the nation’s 
 loudest commentator on content moderation had nothing to say.\n\nUnder Elon 
 Musk’s view of content moderation, any restriction on speech beyond what 
 the law proscribes is censorship. And by that standard, the video of the 
 attack in Buffalo — however graphic — should have remained on the 
 platform since videos of graphic violence are not illegal speech. In 
 practice, platforms were criticized for being too slow to remove them, and 
 Musk found no need to weigh in on the debate.\n\nThe details of the 
 Buffalo, New York shooting are widely known and still painful to report. 
 Ten people were killed on a Saturday afternoon in a supermarket that was a 
 mainstay for residents of Buffalo’s predominantly Black East Side. A 
 gunman livestreamed the murderous violence on Twitch and planned to inflict 
 yet more before being stopped by police.\n\nThe Buffalo gunman was, beyond 
 doubt, radicalized online. He cited the Christchurch mass shooter as an 
 inspiration, copying large parts of the New Zealand terrorist’s manifesto 
 into one of his own. He was motivated by the “great replacement” 
 theory, which holds that white people are being intentionally dispossessed 
 from their positions of power through immigration and interracial marriage. 
 He wrote that he had learned of the theory through 4chan, the online 
 message board that spawned QAnon and has been linked to many other acts of 
 white supremacist terrorism.\n\nHe was also, without doubt, drawing from a 
 playbook of mass shooters who engineer their massacres to spread on social 
 media and hope to exploit the viral power of extreme, graphic violence to 
 amplify a message of hate. And while the original Twitch stream was removed 
 in a matter of minutes, on other platforms, the video circulated much more 
 widely and for longer.\n\nAnd as America reeled from the news, Elon Musk 
 remained silent — despite Tesla’s sizable presence in Buffalo. While 
 Twitter — the company whose moderation policy he has relentlessly 
 critiqued in the lead up to and aftermath of his acquisition deal — was 
 forced to make real-time decisions over whether videos of the shooting 
 should be allowed to circulateor if links to a terrorist manifesto violated 
 content policies, its aspirational owner refrained from comment.\n\nPerhaps 
 his focus has been elsewhere, a sympathetic reader might say. True, with 
 stock markets wobbling, Tesla stocks down, and the Twitter acquisition deal 
 “on hold,” there is a lot that could distract his attention. If he had 
 stopped tweeting entirely over the weekend, it would be fair to suggest 
 that he was occupied elsewhere.\n\nIn reality, within hours of the 
 shooting, Musk had posted a number of tweets, some of them even touching on 
 content moderation. Approximately five hours after the shooting took place, 
 he explained to users how they could access the chronological feed to avoid 
 being “manipulated by the algorithm.” Later on in the evening, he found 
 time to share a newsletter from Matt Taibbi on corporate regulation in 
 California, some images of a recent Space X launch, and a royal portrait of 
 King Louis XIV of France. The next day, he revisited the thread on 
 chronological ordering with a tweet about the importance of open-source 
 code. On Monday, he found enough time to troll Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in 
 a conversation about spam. But watchers looking for any comment on Buffalo 
 found nothing.\n\nWould Elon Musk have ordered videos of the shooting to be 
 removed? So far, he has given no answers because there is no answer that 
 can satisfy both a common understanding of moral decency and his stated 
 position on moderation and free speech. A video showing graphic violence is 
 not in itself illegal, and the Buffalo shooter’s video will certainly be 
 shared by police departments, government agencies, and other organizations 
 investigating the crime. But for millions of social media users to view and 
 share a video of a massacre for their own morbid curiosity is 
 unconscionable, and every platform will have content policies that rightly 
 block or heavily restrict it.\n\nBecause he has failed — at least 
 publicly — to engage with any of the numerous content moderation 
 researchers who study violent and extremist content, Musk has shown no 
 nuanced understanding of the range of speech that is legal but dangerous or 
 that there is any difference between content we should ban outright and 
 content that we should consider limiting from being broadcast on a giant, 
 globe-spanning distribution platform.\n\nNow is a time for that discussion. 
 In a moment when the national conversation is focused on this act of 
 terrorism, Elon Musk has a chance to plant his flag in the ground: to 
 commit to his vision of laissez-faire content moderation and accept the 
 consequences or recognize that there are limits. \n\nInstead, the free 
 speech advocate has become strangely mute.\n\n\nElon Musk’s possible 
 takeover of Twitter is unsettling for many Black users\n\nAnalysis by 
 Brandon Tensley, CNN\nUpdated 2:35 PM EDT, Thu May 5, 
 2022\n\nWashington\nCNN\n — \nA version of this story appeared in CNN’s 
 Race Deconstructed newsletter. To get it in your inbox every week, sign up 
 for free here.\n\nIf the racial discrimination lawsuit against Tesla is any 
 indication, then it makes sense that the news about Elon Musk’s possible 
 takeover of Twitter has unsettled many of the social media platform’s 
 Black users.\n\nWhile the site has become increasingly venomous over the 
 years, it has also allowed Black users to deepen kinship bonds and elevate 
 movements. Now, that community-building might be in 
 jeopardy.\n\n“There’s an innate sense of dread,” Meredith Clark, an 
 associate professor at the School of Journalism and the Department of 
 Communication Studies at Northeastern University, told CNN. “And I think 
 that it comes not just from the announcement that Musk might buy 
 Twitter.”\n\nClark explained that, for many Black Americans, the past 
 decade has been rife with social and political turbulence.\n\nThere was the 
 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of 17-year-old 
 Trayvon Martin, the 2016 election that installed in the White House a man 
 who struggled to condemn White supremacy and the 2020 contest during which 
 plenty of Republican Party leaders suggested that Black votes shouldn’t 
 count, on top of so much else.\n\n“The only reason that (the Musk 
 announcement) is sort of on the same wave as those other events is that 
 this is a person who has made a number of statements that are concerning to 
 Black people,” Clark said. “He’s a son of apartheid. He’s in the 
 middle of a discrimination lawsuit brought by Black employees at his Tesla 
 plants.”\n\nClark minced no words, “You have to be concerned about what 
 it means not only for another billionaire to be playing with money in a way 
 that affects something that represents connection and that you enjoy but 
 for thisbillionaire, with a specific history, to be the person behind that 
 intended purchase.”\n\nCreating connections\nTo understand what might be 
 at stake, let’s pause for a moment to explore the communal dimension of 
 Twitter that Clark nodded to.\n\nIn the early 2010s, when Twitter, which 
 launched in 2006, was still relatively fresh, the site had a dramatically 
 different atmosphere. People were more likely to tweet about fairly mundane 
 things: school gossip, lunch, Shonda Rhimes’ hit TV series “Scandal.” 
 Twitter was a place where ordinary people could talk about \n\nordinary 
 things.\n\nBlack Former Tesla Worker: Nickname for the Plant Was ‘The 
 Slave Ship’\nAllegations of racial discrimination at Elon Musk’s 
 flagship auto factory trigger major lawsuit by state of 
 California.\nhttps://capitalandmain.com/recent-lawsuits-allege-pattern-of-racist-words-deeds-at-tesla-plant\nThompson2-80x80.jpgPublishedon 
 February 15, 2022By Gabriel Thompson \nThe Tesla factory in Fremont, 
 California. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.\nIn the spring of 2017, 
 when Fatima Islam learned she had been hired to work at Tesla’s 
 production plant in Fremont, Calif., she had high hopes. Then a single 
 mother of two young children, the 33-year-old was willing to face the 
 four-hour round-trip commute from her home in Merced, and didn’t flinch 
 when she learned she was expected to work 12-hour shifts, six days a week, 
 inspecting Model 3’s that rolled down the line.\n\n“I had heard so many 
 great things about Tesla,” she said. “I thought that I would be able to 
 grow at the company and turn it into my career, maybe be there my whole 
 life.”\n\nOn the plant floor, Islam quickly started having second 
 thoughts. As an African American woman, she noticed a striking lack of 
 women or African Americans in supervisory roles. Soon after getting hired, 
 she became pregnant, and during one grueling shift she fainted. Later, she 
 said, one of the mechanical technicians referred to her as “the Black 
 pregnant bitch.” Islam said that the same employee repeatedly harassed 
 her 18-year-old co-worker, another African American woman, demanding that 
 she sleep with him. When Islam reported the incidents, bringing along 
 multiple witnesses, she said nothing was done. “He let it be known that 
 he’s cool with HR,” she said of the technician. Soon after, she said, 
 the 18-year-old was fired.\n \n\nAccording to California’s lawsuit 
 against Tesla, workers at the factory used, along with the n-word, terms 
 such as “monkey toes,” “boy,” “hood rats” and “horse 
 hair.”\n\n \nEqually shocking to Islam was the overt racism. She heard 
 the n-word constantly on the plant floor, while Latino workers also called 
 her a mayate, roughly the Spanish language equivalent. Supervisors, she 
 said, did nothing in response; in fact, floor leads sometimes joined in. 
 Racist graffiti, including the n-word and swastikas, were carved into 
 workbenches and scrawled on bathroom stalls.\n\nTesla did not respond to a 
 request for comment. “They make it seem like this great place,” said 
 Islam, of the high-end electric vehicle company that positions itself as a 
 force for social good. “But the nickname for the Tesla plant was ‘the 
 slave ship,’” she said. “You see how comfortable they are with things 
 like that?”\n\n*   *   *\n\nIslam finally left Tesla in 2020, and in 
 September of 2021 she filed a complaint with the California Department of 
 Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), alleging that she suffered racial and 
 sexual harassment and discrimation.\n\nWhile Islam’s individual complaint 
 is still pending, last week the DFEH dropped a bombshell of a lawsuit based 
 upon a nearly three year investigation, which included factual allegations 
 from Islam and other workers. According to the DFEH lawsuit, workers at the 
 factory used, along with the n-word, terms such as “monkey toes,” 
 “boy,” “hood rats” and “horse hair,” and referred to areas 
 where African Americans were concentrated as the “porch monkey 
 station.”\n \n\nThe Tesla Fremont plant is the only nonunion auto plant 
 in the U.S. that is operated by a major American carmaker.\n\n \nThe 
 lawsuit also alleges that the pervasive racism placed African Americans 
 into the most physically demanding jobs; one worker that DFEH interviewed 
 reported that only Black workers were assigned the task of cleaning the 
 factory floor on their hands and knees. The lawsuit states that African 
 American workers had complained about racial harassment and discrimination 
 as far back as 2012, and that in response to complaints, they were 
 “falsely accused of being late, unjustifiably written up, denied 
 transfers, assigned to physically strenuous posts or undesirable locations, 
 constructively discharged or terminated.”\n\nIn response to the lawsuit, 
 Tesla published a blog post refuting the allegations. “Tesla has always 
 disciplined and terminated employees who engage in misconduct, including 
 those who use racial slurs or harass others in different ways,” the 
 company wrote. “A narrative spun by the DFEH and a handful of plaintiff 
 firms to generate publicity is not factual proof.”\n\n*   *   *\n\nThe 
 DFEH lawsuit is only the most recent alleging racial and sexual 
 discrimination and harassment at Tesla’s Fremont plant, which employs 
 more than 15,000 workers across 5.3 million square feet. According to the 
 lawsuit, African Americans hold no executive positions at the plant and 
 make up only 3% of the professional positions, while filling 20% of the 
 factory operative jobs. Previously the home to General Motors and Toyota, 
 the Fremont plant is the only nonunion auto plant in the U.S. that is 
 operated by a major American carmaker. “Our mission: to accelerate the 
 world’s transition to sustainable energy” is stenciled over the 
 entrance.\n\nIn an article published Feb. 11, the Los Angeles Times 
 reported that “the last two years have seen a major uptick in racial and 
 sexual harassment suits against the company,” including at least five in 
 the previous six weeks. Last October, a federal jury ordered Tesla to pay a 
 Black elevator operation at the plant, Owen Diaz, nearly $137 million 
 because the company ignored the racist abuse he suffered. Tesla has since 
 challenged the decision in court.\n \n\n“If you’re hush hush and let 
 everything slide past, you’re gonna move up. But if you’re someone who 
 stands your ground and has morals, you’re going absolutely 
 nowhere.”\n\n~ Fatima Islam, former Tesla factory worker\n\n \nIn 2017, a 
 class action lawsuit was jointly filed by the California Civil Rights Law 
 Group and Bryan Schwartz Law, also alleging widespread racial and sexual 
 harassment at the Tesla plant. The suit, which is still active, was filed 
 on behalf of African-American workers at the Tesla plant hired by staffing 
 agencies, who, unlike direct Tesla employees such as Islam, had not signed 
 mandatory arbitration agreements that prevented them from suing their 
 employer in court. “Although Tesla stands out as a groundbreaking company 
 at the forefront of the electric car revolution,” the lawsuit contends, 
 “its standard operating procedure at the Tesla Factory is pre-Civil 
 Rights Era race discrimination.”\n\nIn response to the 2017 lawsuit Tesla 
 CEO and Product Architect Elon Musk responded with an email to workers. 
 “Part of not being a huge jerk is considering how someone might feel who 
 is part of an historically less represented group,” he wrote. “In 
 fairness, if someone is a jerk to you, but sincerely apologizes, it is 
 important to be thick-skinned and accept that apology. If you are part of a 
 less represented group, you don’t get a free pass on being a jerk 
 yourself.”\n\nFor Islam, who has since found another job where she says 
 she is thriving, asking employees to be thick-skinned in a racist and 
 sexist workplace is another way of asking workers to be quiet. “If 
 you’re hush hush and let everything slide past, you’re gonna move up. 
 But if you’re someone who stands your ground and has morals, you’re 
 going absolutely nowhere. For a person like me who never really missed 
 days, who has worked on every line, there’s no way I shouldn’t have 
 leveled up,” she said, referring to being promoted. But while she 
 remained in the same position, inspecting Model 3’s on the line, she said 
 she watched non-Black workers rise quickly, and attributes her lack of 
 promotion to three factors.\n\n“One, I’m a woman. Two, I’m African 
 American. And three, I won’t stand for anything. You’re not going call 
 me the n-word, you’re not going to sexually harass someone and I’m 
 going to shut up about it. That played a big part in why I didn’t make it 
 with Tesla. Because now I’m watching myself level up so quickly in the 
 workplace, and I’m still me.”\n\n \nCopyright 2022 Capital & 
 Main\n\nCorrection: A previous version of this story stated that the Tesla 
 Fremont plant was the only major nonunion auto plant in the U.S. The Tesla 
 plant is the only nonunion U.S. plant operated by a major American 
 carmaker. We regret the error.\n\nNoose drawing, lynching reference left up 
 for months at Tesla’s Fremont factory, civil-rights lawsuit claims	\nSuit 
 says workers at the electric-car maker’s factory flaunted Confederate 
 flag 
 tattoos\n\nhttps://www.eastbaytimes.com/2022/02/10/noose-drawing-lynching-reference-left-up-for-months-at-teslas-fremont-factory-civil-rights-lawsuit-claims/\nA 
 production associate works on a Tesla Model 3 at the Tesla factory in 
 Fremont, Calif., on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News 
 Group)\nA production associate works on a Tesla Model 3 at the Tesla 
 factory in Fremont, Calif., on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. (Ray Chavez/Bay 
 Area News Group)\nBy ETHAN BARON | ebaron@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area 
 News Group\nPUBLISHED: February 10, 2022 at 11:28 a.m. | UPDATED: February 
 10, 2022 at 4:38 p.m.\nBlack workers at Tesla’s Fremont factory were paid 
 less than white workers, denied advancements and faced daily racist abuse, 
 including a noose drawn in a bathroom next to a reference to lynching and a 
 racial slur, a lawsuit by California’s civil rights regulator 
 claims.\n\nAlthough the suit refers to Tesla’s three manufacturing 
 facilities in the U.S., the claims focus on the factory in Fremont beside 
 I-880 where the $950 billion, publicly traded company makes electric cars. 
 Tesla, which recently moved its headquarters from Palo Alto to Texas, is 
 fighting a slew of lawsuits by Black workers and former workers claiming it 
 failed to adequately respond to racism and sexual harassment in its 
 facilities, including at its parts plant in Lathrop near Tracy.\n\n“As 
 early as 2012, Black and/or African American Tesla workers have complained 
 that Tesla production leads, supervisors, and managers constantly use the 
 n-word and other racial slurs to refer to Black workers,” the suit filed 
 Wednesday by the state’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing 
 alleged. “They have complained that swastikas, ‘KKK,’ the n-word, and 
 other racist writing are etched onto walls of restrooms, restroom stalls, 
 lunch tables, and even factory machinery.”\n\nBlack workers were paid 
 less, assigned to “more physically demanding posts,” were terminated 
 and disciplined more often than other workers and were “often denied 
 advancement opportunities,” the suit said. The civil-rights agency also 
 claimed that other workers at the Fremont factory displayed “racially 
 incendiary” Confederate flag tattoos to intimidate Black 
 colleagues.\n\nTesla, led by CEO Elon Musk, did not immediately respond for 
 a request for comment on the claims. The company in a blog post Wednesday 
 about the impending “misguided” lawsuit said it “strongly opposes all 
 forms of discrimination and harassment (and) has always disciplined and 
 terminated employees who engage in misconduct, including those who use 
 racial slurs or harass others in different ways.” The firm recently 
 launched a training program that “reinforces Tesla’s requirement that 
 all employees must treat each other with respect and reminds employees 
 about the numerous ways they can report concerns, including anonymously,” 
 according to the post.\n\nTesla says California civil rights agency is 
 investigating ‘systematic racial discrimination’\n\nDepartment of Fair 
 Employment and Housing director Kevin Kish said in a statement that the 
 lawsuit was based on hundreds of complaints from workers.\n\n“A common 
 narrative was Black and/or African American workers being taunted by racial 
 slurs and then baited into verbal and physical confrontations, where they, 
 in turn, were the ones disciplined for being purportedly ‘aggressive’ 
 or ‘threatening,’ ” the suit claimed. “These written warnings in 
 their personnel files had consequences for later promotional and 
 professional opportunities.”\n\nComplaints about racism in the electric 
 car maker’s operations were filed as recently as this year, the suit 
 said. Black workers who complained about racism were denied bonuses and 
 promotions and “falsely accused of being late, unjustifiably written up, 
 denied transfers, assigned to physically strenuous posts or undesirable 
 locations, constructively discharged, or terminated,” the suit 
 alleged.\n\nAccording to a 2020 report the company produced regarding 
 diversity in its workforce, 10% of Tesla’s employees are Black, while 4% 
 of those in leadership roles are black. Among new hires, 12% are Black, and 
 10% of promotions go to Black employees, the report said.\n\nTesla is 
 fighting a slew of lawsuits claiming discrimination in its facilities. Last 
 week, Kaylen Barker, a Black worker at a Tesla parts factory in Lathrop, 
 claimed that a white co-worker called her the n-word and assaulted her. 
 According to the suit, Tesla fired her assailant but then rehired her about 
 two weeks later. In November, Jessica Barraza, a Fremont factory worker, 
 claimed in a lawsuit that she and other female workers at the facility were 
 subjected to “a pervasive culture of sexual harassment” which included 
 “a daily barrage of sexist language and behavior” along with 
 “frequent groping on the factory floor.”\n\nIn October, a San Francisco 
 federal court jury awarded a Black former worker at the Fremont factory 
 almost $137 million. Owen Diaz, who worked at the plant in 2015 and 2016 as 
 a contracted elevator operator, alleged in a lawsuit that he faced “daily 
 racist epithets” and that colleagues drew swastikas and left racist 
 graffiti and drawings around the facility. Tesla is seeking a new trial in 
 that case and said in its annual report it would appeal the award “if 
 necessary.”\n\nIn May, an arbitrator ordered Tesla to pay $1 million to 
 Melvin Berry, a Black former Tesla factory worker called racial slurs by 
 supervisors. Tesla is also still fighting a 2017 lawsuit by former worker 
 Marcus Vaughn, a Black man who claimed the Fremont factory floor was a 
 “hotbed for racist behavior.”\n\nSan Francisco lawyer David Lowe, who 
 late last year filed seven sexual harassment lawsuits against Tesla by 
 female workers and former workers including Barraza, said the Department of 
 Fair Employment and Housing has investigative powers that private litigants 
 lack.\n\n“For them to take an interest and get involved indicates to me 
 that they view it as a particularly serious or egregious situation,” Lowe 
 said.\n\nThe department, in its lawsuit, is seeking unspecified 
 compensation for workers and punitive damages.\n\nIn a statement, Regional 
 NAACP president Rick Callender noted that people of color face daily 
 discrimination in work and life.\n\n“The Department of Fair Employment 
 and Housing should be applauded for seeking justice against Tesla for their 
 racist behavior,” Callender said.\n\n\nHorrific allegations of racism 
 prompt California lawsuit against Tesla 
 \n\nhttps://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-02-11/la-fi-tesla-race-discrimination-lawsuit\n\nBlack 
 workers at Tesla’s Fremont, Calif. factory were relegated to difficult 
 physical jobs such as scrubbing floors on their hands and knees, a lawsuit 
 alleges. (Noah Berger/Associated Press)\nBY MARGOT ROOSEVELT, RUSS 
 MITCHELL\nFEB. 11, 2022 5 AM PT \nWarning: This story quotes several racist 
 slurs allegedly directed at Black workers at Tesla’s California plant, 
 according to a lawsuit filed against the company.\n\nThe N-word and other 
 racist slurs were hurled daily at Black workers at Tesla’s California 
 plant, delivered not just by fellow employees but also by managers and 
 supervisors.\n\nSo says California’s civil rights agency in a lawsuit 
 filed against the electric-vehicle maker in Alameda County Superior Court 
 on Thursday on behalf of thousands of Black workers after a decade of 
 complaints and a 32-month investigation.\n\nTesla segregated Black workers 
 into separate areas that its employees referred to as “porch monkey 
 stations,” “the dark side,” “the slave ship” and “the 
 plantation,” the lawsuit alleges. \n\nOnly Black workers had to scrub 
 floors on their hands and knees, and they were relegated to the Fremont, 
 Calif., factory’s most difficult physical jobs, the suit 
 states.\n\nGraffiti — including “KKK,” “Go back to Africa,” the 
 hangman’s noose, the Confederate Flag and “F-- [N-word]” — were 
 carved into restroom walls, workplace benches and lunch tables and were 
 slow to be erased, the lawsuit says. \n\nTesla responded to the lawsuit, 
 filed by the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, with a blog post 
 saying that the agency had investigated almost 50 discrimination complaints 
 in the past without finding misconduct — an assertion the agency 
 denied.\n\n“A narrative spun by the DFEH and a handful of plaintiff firms 
 to generate publicity is not factual proof,” the blog post said, adding 
 that the company provides “the best paying jobs in the automotive 
 industry … at a time when manufacturing jobs are leaving 
 California.”\n\nThe lawsuit comes in the wake of Tesla’s billionaire 
 chief executive, Elon Musk, moving the company’s headquarters from Palo 
 Alto to Austin, Texas, where he is building a major new assembly plant.The 
 state’s lawsuit suggests the relocation to a state known for looser 
 enforcement is no coincidence, declaring it to be “another move to avoid 
 accountability.”\n\n\n\n\nNot only were Tesla’s Black workers 
 California lawsuit against Tesla subjected to “willful, malicious” 
 harassment, but they were also denied promotions and paid less than other 
 workers for the same jobs, the suit asserted. They were disciplined for 
 infractions for which other workers were not penalized.\n\n\nA Tesla 
 employee works on metal parts for cars in the Tesla factory in 
 Fremont.(Jeff Chiu/Associated Press)\n“We hear a lot about ‘structural 
 racism.’ This case is very focused on segregation — the structural 
 barriers to equality for Black employees,” Kish said.\n\nMost of the 
 agency’s complaints involve individual workers or small groups. And 
 racial complaints are on the rise. In 2016, the agency investigated 744 
 cases. By 2020, that had grown to 1,548, Kish said.\n\nThe economic and 
 political stakes of taking on Tesla are hard to exaggerate: The company has 
 drawn praise for proving people will buy electric cars when most of the 
 auto industry was saying that would be impossible.\n\nAlthough competition 
 is growing, it’s still the top-selling EV brand worldwide. In 2021, the 
 company said, it delivered 936,172 cars, 87% more than in 2020.\n\n“Tesla 
 markets its vehicles to the environmentally- conscious, socially 
 responsible consumer,” the lawsuit states. “Yet [that] masks the 
 reality of a company that profits from an army of production workers, many 
 of whom are people of color, working under egregious 
 conditions.”\n\nTesla’s Fremont factory is the only nonunion plant in 
 the U.S. operated by a major American automaker.\n\nCalifornia’s 
 crackdown on the carmaker, which has 36,200 employees in the state and 
 80,000 worldwide, has been a long time coming. Black workers’ complaints 
 of racial harassment and discrimination at the Fremont plant, which employs 
 15,000, date from 2012, the agency said.\n\nBlack workers make up 20% of 
 Tesla’s factory assemblers, but there are no Black executives and just 3% 
 of professionals at the Fremont plant are Black, the lawsuit said.\n\nIn 
 2017, the California Civil Rights Law Group, a Bay Area firm, filed a 
 class-action lawsuit against Tesla on behalf of 1,000 Black workers. It has 
 interviewed more than 100 who make claims similar to those in this week’s 
 DFEH lawsuit. But that private lawsuit, still in court, covered only 
 workers employed by staffing agencies that did not make them sign 
 arbitration agreements.\n\nLike many companies now, Tesla requires its 
 directly hired employees to sign arbitration agreements, relegating any 
 complaints to secret proceedings with private judges and without any option 
 to appeal. After the 2017 class-action suit, it also required its staffing 
 agency workers to sign agreements waiving their rights to go to 
 court.\n\nWhen racism charges began to surface at Tesla, Chief Executive 
 Elon Musk emailed employees and told aggrieved workers to be 
 “thick-skinned” and accept apologies.(Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated 
 Press)\nGovernment agencies are not required to respect arbitration 
 agreements, which opens the way for California’s broader 
 lawsuit.\n\nLawrence Organ, the lead attorney in the 2017 suit, said his 
 firm of six lawyers, which specializes in harassment cases, has seen a 
 marked rise in race-related complaints in the last five years. Before that, 
 his firm had handled just two or three such cases in a decade. Today, it 
 has 30 pending cases involving the N-word.\n\n“Ever since Trump started 
 running for president in 2015, there has been this change in attitude by 
 people who harbor racist thoughts and racist beliefs,” he said. “They 
 think that they can speak out and say whatever they want to 
 say.”\n\nBesides the N-word, harassment at Tesla, according to the DFEH 
 lawsuit, included slurs such as “Monkey toes,” “banana boy,” 
 “hood rats” and “mayate,” a Spanish word for dung beetle. \n\nBut 
 the Tesla cases are “very unusual,” Organ said, because “Tesla 
 doesn’t enforce its alleged zero tolerance policy for racist conduct.” 
 He added that he had sued the NUMMI auto plant, which occupied the same 
 factory before Tesla, many times for employment cases “but never for 
 racial harassment.”\n\nAt Tesla’s Fremont factory, Black workers’ 
 complaints were “ignored or perfunctorily acknowledged and then 
 dismissed” by management, the lawsuit alleges. Those who complained were 
 subject to “retaliatory harassment, undesirable assignments and/or 
 termination.”\n\nMusk, who grew up in South Africa, responded to the 2017 
 class-action suit, which called the company “a hotbed of racist 
 behavior,” with an email to employees describing company culture as 
 “hardcore and demanding.” Anyone who makes an ”unintentional slur” 
 should apologize, he wrote, and the recipient should “be thick-skinned 
 and accept the apology.”\n\nIn October, a federal jury in San Francisco 
 awarded a Black elevator operator at Tesla’s plant $137 million in a 
 harassment case. A judge signaled in January the award may be reduced but 
 did not grant Tesla’s request for a new trial.\n\n\nAt least 160 worker 
 lawsuits have been filed against Tesla since 2006, according to Plainsite, 
 a court document transparency organization. The last two years have seen a 
 major uptick in racial and sexual harassment suits against Tesla. At least 
 five have been filed in the last six weeks.\n\nOne was lodged by a female 
 Black employee who said her female white boss struck her with a hot 
 grinding tool and called her “stupid” and the N-word and insulted her 
 intelligence. The suit says the supervisor was fired but later 
 rehired.\n\nAnother was filed by a man who said he wrote directly to Musk 
 to complain about racial harassment and was then told to report to human 
 resources, where he was fired.\n\nTesla hired most workers through 14 
 staffing firms “to avoid responsibility,” the state lawsuit asserted. 
 The carmaker declined to investigate complaints by staffing agency workers, 
 although most of the Black workers were employed by staffing 
 firms.\n\nStaffing firms were also an issue in two large race 
 discrimination cases brought by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity 
 Commission involving hundreds of Black warehouse workers in the Inland 
 Empire.\n\nA Moreno Valley case against Ryder Integrated Logistics and its 
 staffing firm, Irvine-based Kimco Staffing Services, charged that at least 
 121 Black workers were frequently subjected to the N-word and other slurs 
 by fellow workers and managers, and exposed to racist graffiti in the 
 restrooms. Assembly lines were segregated by race, with Black workers and 
 Latino workers in separate work areas. The two companies failed to 
 investigate and retaliated against workers who complained, the EEOC 
 said.\n\nThe suit was settled in May for $2 million. The companies were 
 required to create a tracking system for discrimination, revise its 
 policies and submit to stringent outside monitoring.\n\nA similar EEOC 
 lawsuit in Ontario against Cardinal Health, the giant medical distribution 
 company, and its Glendale-based staffing agency, AppleOne, was settled in 
 July for $1.4 million and requirements for stringent policy and monitoring 
 rules. The case involved frequent N-word harassment, graffiti and job 
 discrimination affecting hundreds of Black workers.\n\nHow Tesla and its 
 doctor made sure injured employees didn’t get workers’ 
 comp\nhttps://www.revealnews.org/article/how-tesla-and-its-doctor-made-sure-injured-employees-didnt-get-workers-comp/?fbclid=IwAR0oyUjcA5sGI0RfBiD6CYrFjuNdsopW6wE1wblKfSGvP207xooxe7rvWQc\n\nBy 
 Will Evans / April 11, 2019 \n\nbasil-besh-v3-1200x640.jpeg\n\\n\nInside a 
 medical clinic not far from Tesla’s electric car factory, Yvette Bonnet 
 started noting a troubling pattern. The automaker’s workers’ 
 compensation manager would pressure her boss, Dr. Basil Besh, to make sure 
 Tesla wasn’t on the hook for certain injured workers.\n\nAnd in her 
 observation, Besh did whatever he could to not jeopardize his chance to run 
 Tesla’s on-site factory clinic.\n\n“He would say, ‘I’m not losing 
 the contract over this – get this case closed,’” said Bonnet, who was 
 operations manager for Besh’s Access Omnicare clinic in Fremont, 
 California, for about a year.\n\n“Besh wanted to make certain that we 
 were doing what Tesla wanted so badly,” she said. “He got the 
 priorities messed up. It’s supposed to be patients first.”\n\nIt’s 
 not unusual for employers to be pushy about how they want their workers’ 
 injuries handled, Bonnet said. But the intensity of Tesla’s pressure, she 
 said, combined with Besh’s willingness to let bottom-line concerns 
 influence clinical decisions, made this situation different from any Bonnet 
 had encountered.\n\nReveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting 
 previously reported that Tesla systematically kept worker injuries off the 
 books, artificially improving its safety record and violating the law on 
 recording workplace injuries. We also showed that Tesla’s medical clinic 
 ignored worker injuries, sending the hurt back to work without proper 
 treatment and helping the company claim publicly that it had improved. Besh 
 said in an interview last year that Tesla doesn’t pressure him to dismiss 
 injuries and that his determinations are “only based on what the patient 
 needs.”\n\nHowever, interviews with former clinic employees and internal 
 clinic communications show how Tesla and Besh coordinated behind the scenes 
 in an arrangement that financially benefited both the carmaker and the 
 doctor, to the detriment of the injured. Neither Tesla nor Besh responded 
 to questions for this story.\n\nBesh’s clinic had been struggling to make 
 money, according to former employees. They say business dropped off when 
 Tesla, previously Access Omnicare’s top client, opened an on-site factory 
 clinic managed by another company in 2016.\n\nBut as Tesla took heat for 
 how often its factory workers were getting injured, Access Omnicare got a 
 chance to win back Tesla’s business, to take over its on-site clinic. In 
 December 2017, Tesla sent a patient, Bill Casillas, to Besh as part of a 
 trial run of sorts.\n\nCasillas, a worker at Tesla’s seat factory, had 
 felt a strong shock when he touched a forklift there. Disoriented, he 
 realized he had urinated on himself. A co-worker in the forklift saw it 
 jolt Casillas back and told Reveal that it “seemed like it was affecting 
 him greatly.” Casillas’ partner said he came home shaken, unlike she 
 had ever seen him before. He was left with relentless pain, numbness and 
 balance problems, he said.\n\nAn internal Tesla incident report documented 
 a work injury due to “shock from an electrical forklift” that was then 
 put out of service. Kaiser Permanente doctors who examined him the day 
 after the incident diagnosed him with an industrial “electrocution.” A 
 doctor at Besh’s clinic agreed that it was a work-related electrical 
 injury, prescribing him limited job duties, physical therapy and additional 
 tests, medical records show.\n\nBut Tesla didn’t like the diagnosis, 
 Bonnet said. She got an email from Tesla’s workers’ compensation 
 manager, Amir Sharifi. He argued that there wasn’t a work injury at all 
 – just a case of minor static electricity.\n\nBonnet relayed the message 
 to Besh, who “came stomping over in a huff,” Bonnet recalled. She said 
 he angrily confronted the physician treating Casillas, echoing Sharifi’s 
 static electricity argument. He complained the tests cost too much and told 
 the doctor to discharge Casillas, Bonnet said. Afterward, the doctor told 
 Bonnet that she didn’t agree. Upset with the doctor’s handling of the 
 case, Besh asked Bonnet to stop scheduling her to work at Access Omnicare, 
 Bonnet said.\n\nThat’s when another one of Besh’s physicians, Dr. 
 Muhannad Hafi, stepped in and did as Tesla wished. Hafi was in a vulnerable 
 position. He’d been publicly accused of sexually assaulting two female 
 patients at previous jobs. The California Medical Board had moved to take 
 away his license.\n\n“I have spoken again with Mr. Sharifi at Tesla and 
 he informed that the forklift did not have electric current running,” 
 Hafi wrote. “With that said, in my medical opinion, the patient does not 
 have an industrial injury attributed to an electrical current.” He went 
 so far as to say Casillas didn’t have any symptoms of 
 concern.\n\nCasillas’ workers’ comp claim was denied based on Hafi’s 
 January 2018 report, a decision being fought by Casillas’ lawyer, Sue 
 Borg. A doctor conducting an independent medical examination as part of 
 that process wrote in November that it was a “very complex case” and 
 “difficult to determine” whether Casillas was suffering from an 
 electrical injury.\n\nCasillas said he still walks with a cane, is out of 
 work because of the injury and needs government disability benefits to get 
 by. Because of the denial, he said, Tesla stopped paying for his time off 
 work.\n\n“I was just speechless,” he said.\n\nBesh, a prominent hand 
 surgeon who also runs a surgery center and hosts political fundraisers at 
 his home, used the Casillas case in negotiations with Tesla, Bonnet said. 
 She recalled him telling Tesla that if he was in charge of the factory 
 clinic, Casillas’ case wouldn’t have gotten as far as it did.\n\nThe 
 week after Hafi discharged Casillas, at the beginning of February 2018, 
 Tesla met with Access Omnicare.\n\n“How was the meeting today?” Amirra 
 Besh, the doctor’s wife and clinic administrator, texted 
 Bonnet.\n\n“GREAT!” Bonnet responded, saying Tesla agreed to start 
 referring all MRI’s and pre-employment physicals to Access 
 Omnicare.\n\nIn her reply, Amirra Besh sounded excited for the work ahead. 
 “Excellent!” she texted. “Time to deliver.”\n\n***\n\n\nFormer 
 Tesla worker Stephon Nelson clutches his back as he climbs steps outside 
 his girlfriend’s home in Oakland, Calif. He was injured in August while 
 working in the trunk of a Model X. Something slipped and its hatchback 
 crunched down on his back. \nCREDIT: PAUL KURODA FOR REVEAL\n\nThe 
 workers’ compensation system involves a fundamental tradeoff: Companies 
 must provide medical treatment and benefits to injured employees, who then 
 can’t sue over the injuries.\n\nWorkers’ comp fraud is usually 
 associated with workers faking injuries or clinics billing for sham 
 services. But the law also prohibits employers from fraudulently denying a 
 claim or discouraging a worker from pursuing one. Those caught can face 
 fines and jail time.\n\nPhysicians can disagree on what’s necessary to 
 treat an injury. But if they’re being pressured to change a diagnosis to 
 avoid a legitimate workers’ comp claim, “it could be both unethical and 
 illegal on multiple levels,” said Dale Banda, vice president of the 
 Anti-Fraud Alliance and former deputy commissioner of the California 
 Department of Insurance’s enforcement branch.\n\nMany employers have an 
 incentive to keep down workers’ comp claims because it lowers their 
 insurance premiums. Insurance companies pay out the benefits but charge 
 employers based in part on the number of successful claims.\n\nTesla has 
 even more at stake because it has a form of self-insurance. The company is 
 directly on the hook for paying up to $750,000 of each worker’s claim, 
 records show.\n\nA serious injury easily could cost the company tens of 
 thousands of dollars. In a factory with hundreds of injuries a year – 
 Tesla recorded 947 in 2018 – that could add up to significant damage, 
 especially for a company struggling to be profitable. Tesla recently closed 
 some of its retail stores and laid off employees to control costs.\n\nOne 
 way to keep costs down is to avoid having claims in the first place. 
 Multiple former employees said Tesla has at times failed to give injured 
 workers the official form to file a workers’ compensation claim. 
 California law requires employers to provide the form, called a DWC 1, 
 within one day of learning of an injury.\n\n\nAnna Watson (in floral top), 
 a physician assistant who worked at Tesla’s on-site medical clinic for 
 three weeks in August, decried the lack of medical care the carmaker 
 provided to injured workers at a meeting of the California Alternative 
 Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority.\nCREDIT: PAUL 
 KURODA FOR REVEAL\n\nAnna Watson, a physician assistant who worked in the 
 Tesla factory clinic in August, said she wasn’t allowed to give injured 
 workers medical treatment or job restrictions, even when they clearly 
 needed it.\n\n“Everybody leaves this clinic as first aid,” Watson said 
 she was told. Employers don’t need to provide a claim form for injuries 
 that require only first aid.\n\nLaurie Shelby, Tesla’s vice president for 
 environment, health and safety, recently told state officials, “We set up 
 a process to ensure that our employees receive the proper paperwork and 
 care.” But this, too, is contradicted by the accounts of former 
 employees.\n\nIn March 2018, Vicki Salvador was at the end of her 12-hour 
 overnight shift in Tesla’s paint department when she tripped on her 
 overly long full-body paint suit.\n\nThe fall broke a bone in her hand, she 
 said. Salvador went to the emergency room, where she got a splint. She was 
 told that she should see a specialist but needed to have Tesla handle it 
 from then on because it was a work injury. She still owes $100 for the 
 hospital visit.\n\n\nVicki Salvador tripped and broke a bone in her hand 
 while working at Tesla’s car factory in March 2018. She went to the 
 hospital and got a splint, shown here, but didn’t receive a workers’ 
 compensation claim form from Tesla, she said.\n\nSalvador’s supervisor 
 put her on light duty for a few weeks, she said. But even though she asked 
 about workers’ compensation at the time, no one followed up or gave her a 
 claim form, she said.\n\n“At that point, I gave up because I felt like 
 anything I said, I was in jeopardy of losing my job,” said Salvador, 
 echoing a common worry among Tesla workers. She says she was fired in 
 January after tweeting about how many cars were coming through the 
 factory.\n\nStephon Nelson gave up, too. He suffered a crushing injury in 
 August when the hatchback of a Model X fell on his back. The on-site 
 medical clinic kept sending him back to work full duty, even though he 
 could barely walk.\n\nEventually, Access Omnicare diagnosed him with 
 intractable back pain and contusions, medical records show. Nelson said he 
 asked for a workers’ comp claim form from his supervisor, the factory 
 clinic and Tesla human resources, but no one gave him one.\n\n“I just 
 knew after the third or fourth time that they weren’t going to do 
 anything about it,” Nelson said. “I was very frustrated. I was 
 upset.’”\n\nNelson quit Tesla in September. Now he’s on the hook for 
 more than a thousand dollars in hospital visits. He said he doesn’t know 
 how he’ll pay it.\n\n***\n\nWhen Tesla flagged a case, Dr. Basil Besh 
 jumped on it, Yvette Bonnet said.\n\nIn some cases, he ordered his medical 
 staff to reverse course and change diagnoses and job restrictions to make 
 the automaker happy, Bonnet said. In others, he’d take action 
 himself.\n\nOne Tesla worker came into the clinic with a skin rash, Bonnet 
 remembered. Amir Sharifi, Tesla’s workers’ compensation manager, told 
 the clinic that it couldn’t have come from a work exposure. Normally, one 
 of Besh’s providers would have seen the patient, but Besh intervened 
 personally. Bonnet said she was there when he confronted the patient, 
 without having examined the worker or reviewed his medical 
 records.\n\n“He went right into the room with that guy, and he said 
 there’s no way this happened at work,” she said. “He had already 
 decided before he went in that he was going to shut this guy down.”\n\nA 
 couple of text messages from Bonnet’s time at the clinic hint at 
 Sharifi’s involvement.\n\nIn one, Amirra Besh wrote, “Tesla patient 
 with alleged ‘mold’ exposure, Amir sending an email.” It notes that 
 only a specific doctor, who “has been briefed,” should see the patient. 
 Bonnet said this was a way for Tesla to influence the case.\n\nIn the end, 
 Access Omnicare won the Tesla contract.\n\nBesh, in an interview last year, 
 said Tesla pressures him only on “accurate documentation.”\n\n“What 
 they’ll push back on is, ‘Doctor, I need more clarity on this 
 report.’ And we do that for them,” Besh said.\n\nBesh took over the 
 factory clinic in June. Bonnet was fired the next month after clashing with 
 Besh. Dr. Muhannad Hafi, who dismissed the electrical injury, also left 
 Access Omnicare and later lost his medical license as a result of the 
 sexual misconduct accusations.\n\nShelby, Tesla’s vice president for 
 safety, gushed about the clinic on an earnings call in October, saying it 
 provides “the absolute best care for our associates” and is overseen by 
 “one of California’s leading orthopedic surgeons.”\n\nCEO Elon Musk 
 jumped in to add that Tesla will expand on it at Fremont and at Tesla’s 
 Nevada battery plant, “so that we have really immediate first-class 
 health care available right on the spot when people need it.”\n\n“If 
 you become injured or ill for any reason,” he said, “then there’s 
 health care immediately on-site.”\n\nThis story was edited by Andrew 
 Donohue and Matt Thompson and copy edited by Nikki Frick.\n\nWill Evans can 
 be reached at wevans@revealnews.org. Follow him on Twitter: 
 @willCIR.\n\n\nElon Musk already restarted Tesla production. Now the county 
 says it’s allowed next week.\nThe electric-car manufacturer brought 
 workers back on Monday, in defiance of county 
 orders.\n\nhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/13/tesla-alameda-reopen-plant/\nWork 
 can restart at Tesla's manufacturing plant in Fremont, Calif., as soon as 
 next week, Alameda County officials say.\nWork can restart at Tesla's 
 manufacturing plant in Fremont, Calif., as soon as next week, Alameda 
 County officials say. (Ben Margot/AP)\nBy \nRachel Lerman \nMay 13, 2020 at 
 11:43 a.m. PDT\nSAN FRANCISCO — Alameda County, where Tesla’s main 
 manufacturing plant is located, cleared the electric-car company to start 
 up again next week with safety precautions in place.\nBut led by chief 
 executive Elon Musk, Tesla already ramped up production earlier this week, 
 one of the most high-profile violations of a local health order amid the 
 coronavirus crisis and raising questions about county enforcement.\nAlameda 
 County said late Tuesday that it had approved Tesla’s site-specific plan 
 to reopen its plant in Fremont, Calif., assuming the company follows strict 
 safety guidelines, including social distancing to prevent the spread of 
 covid-19. Tesla can start preparing this week, and can restart work next 
 week, the county said.\nThe county said that the Fremont Police Department 
 will make sure Tesla is following the agreed-upon safety guidelines. The 
 plan is also contingent on public health indicators tracking the spread of 
 the coronavirus in the Bay Area.\n“We reviewed the plan and held 
 productive discussions today with Tesla’s representatives about their 
 safety and prevention plans, including some additional safety 
 recommendations,” the county’s public health department said in a tweet 
 announcing the decision.\nThe county did not immediately respond to a 
 request for comment on the plant’s reopening timeline. In a news release, 
 the county said it did not have “any further comment and will not be 
 taking any requests for interviews.”\nTesla’s Elon Musk receives 
 support from Trump as he reopens factory in defiance of county 
 order\n\nTesla did not respond to a request for comment. Fremont Police 
 spokeswoman Geneva Bosques said the department would visit the plant to 
 make sure the safety protocols were being followed. She said the police 
 wouldn’t give specific details about the visit before it happens.\nThe 
 state of California allowed some business operations to start up again last 
 week, but Bay Area counties have stricter regulations that have not yet 
 been lifted. On Monday, Alameda County told Tesla to stop production, but 
 workers continue to go to work.\nMusk on Monday tweeted that officials 
 should arrest him if any enforcement took place. County officials the same 
 day said they were still in negotiations.\nOn Saturday, Tesla filed suit 
 against Alameda County seeking to stay open. The same day, Musk threatened 
 to move Tesla headquarters, which are located in another California county 
 in Palo Alto, to Texas and Nevada.\nHe also called interim Alameda County 
 public health official Erica Pan “an unelected county official” after 
 learning that the county orders supersede the more relaxed restrictions 
 from the state.\nTesla files suit in response to coronavirus restrictions 
 after Musk threatens to relocate operations\n\nIt’s not Musk’s first 
 attempt to keep the factory open. Workers were asked to report to work as 
 shelter-in-place orders took effect in March, with public health officials 
 stepping in to tell Tesla that the work was considered nonessential. Musk 
 has also emerged as a vocal opponent of government shelter-in-place orders, 
 calling broadly for society to reopen and people to get back to work.\nMusk 
 tweeted a picture of an ice cream sundae at a restaurant Tuesday night, 
 replying “Life should be lived.” He told a commenter he got it at 
 “Buca,” referring to Italian chain restaurant Bucca di Beppo. But the 
 photo appears to have been taken from Buca di Beppo’s own tweet in March 
 2017.\nThe brash chief executive has corralled other leaders in Silicon 
 Valley to his cause, and President Trump tweeted his support Tuesday for 
 the Tesla plant to reopen this week.\nOn Saturday, Tesla posted a blog 
 about its return-to-work plan, saying it is the result of “careful” 
 planning for months. It calls for some temperature-check protocols and 
 reduced break-room capacity to maintain social distancing.\nSome Fremont 
 workers who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not 
 allowed to discuss the matter publicly said that factory workers were not 
 observing proper social distancing.\nElon Musk calls Tesla workers back to 
 the factory (again). Health officials say no (again).\n\nMusk retweeted an 
 article Tuesday night that said that he had emailed employees to thank them 
 for working.\n“It is so cool seeing the factory come back to life and you 
 are making it happen!!” it said, \n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2022/05/20/18849853.php
SUMMARY:Stop The Poison! Speak Out At Twitter HQ To Protest Racist Union Busting Elon Musk
LOCATION:A protest will be held at the Twitter HQ during their stockholders meeting 
 to protest the racist union busting record of Elon Musk and his plan to use 
 his take-over of Twitter as a platform for racists and fascists. Speakers 
 will also talk about his criminal record at Tesla where he terrorized 
 workers, violated labor laws and allowed racist and sexist attacks on 
 workers. He also criminally conspired to limit liability for injured 
 workers which is workers comp fraud.
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2022/05/20/18849853.php
DTSTART:20220525T190000Z
DTEND:20220525T203000Z
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