Six more women have filed separate lawsuits against electric car-maker Tesla in the US for rampant sexual harassment at the workplace, as its CEO Elon Musk (chosen as the Time’s ‘person of the year) has been accused of tweeting “lewd comment about women’s bodies or a taunt toward employees who report misconduct.”
A Washington Post report said that six more women who work at Tesla’s Fremont, California-based factory and service center had filed lawsuits against the company.
The women alleged that they were subject to a culture of sexual harassment at the workplace.
They claimed in the lawsuits that “their male coworkers frequently make lewd comments towards their bodies or clothes, as well as engage in abusive behavior like catcalling and inappropriate touching”.
Eden Mederos, one of the six women, told The Post that “everything got worse” once the Model Y was announced, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted “S3XY,” an acronym referencing the Model S, 3, X, and Y.
Musk is also frequently observed tweeting out jokes mentioning “69” or “420” and other childish content, which “caused the technicians to be even worse,” the report said late on Tuesday.
As the report of new lawsuits was made public, Musk tweeted to US Senator Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday: “You remind me of when I was a kid and my friend’s angry Mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason.”
Musk was replying to Warren’s tweet, which read: “Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year (Musk) will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else.”
Musk also replied with a tweet containing a 2019 Fox News article titled, “Elizabeth Warren is a fraud — Her lies about being Native American disqualify her from presidency.”
“Please don’t call the manager on me, Senator Karen,” he further posted.
He called her “Senator Karen”, referring to “the trope of a petty, obnoxious, and entitled white woman,” reports The Verge.
“Elon Musk tweeting a lewd comment about women’s bodies or a taunt toward employees who report misconduct reflects an attitude at the top that enables the pattern of pervasive sexual harassment and retaliation at the heart of these cases,” said attorney David A. Lowe, partner at Rudy Exelrod Zieff & Lowe, who is representing the six women.
Earlier this week, Tesla was hit by a second sexual harassment lawsuit in the US within a month. Erica Cloud, an assembly line worker at Tesla’s Fremont, California-based factory, filed the lawsuit.
The lawsuit claimed that she faced “sexual harassment on a near-daily basis” from her former manager.
Another female Tesla employee, Jessica Barraza, last month filed a lawsuit against the company, accusing the automaker of creating a hostile work environment where sexual harassment was “rampant”.
