Women Accuses Tesla of Disgusting Sexual Harassment

"After almost three years of experiencing all the harassment, it robs your sense of security — it almost dehumanizes you."

Daily Harassment 

A woman is suing Tesla after she allegedly received near daily sexual harassment while working at the company, but got no help despite reporting her issues to her supervisors and human resources. 

Jessica Barraza, a production associate on the Tesla Model 3, sued the electric car company on Thursday, according to The Washington Post. In her filing, she alleged disgusting and outrageous treatment at the hands of her coworkers, who she says regularly catcalled and touched her without her consent at Tesla’s Fremont, California factory.

"After almost three years of experiencing all the harassment, it robs your sense of security — it almost dehumanizes you," Barraza told WaPo. 

Nightmarish Conditions

The lawsuit says that she experienced "nightmarish conditions" brought on by the "rampant sexual harassment at Tesla." She also accuses the company of fostering a "frat house" setting rather than a "cutting-edge company in the heart of the San Francisco Bay area."

Her claims were backed up by several other employees at the Tesla site, who told WaPo that they witnessed several of the incidents described by Barraza. The issue doesn’t just seem to be localized in that particular site either, as other Tesla employees elsewhere have come forward with their own claims.

"I don’t know if it’s the 12 hour shifts that get to these guys or what it is — they just act like they’ve never seen girls in there or something," Alisa Blickman, a production associate at a nearby Tesla factory, told WaPo. “You really feel like a piece of meat in there.”

Top Down Issue

Barraza points to Tesla CEO Elon Musk for helping encourage and breed such a toxic culture — specifically citing Musk’s joke tweet wherein he suggested creating "T.I.T.S University."

"That doesn’t set a good example for the factory — it almost gives it like an … ‘he’s tweeting about it, it has to be okay,’ ” she told the newspaper. "It’s not fair to myself, to my family, to other women who are working there."

READ MORE: A Tesla factory worker alleges sexual harassment is rampant in a rare lawsuit. Now other women are stepping forward. [The Washington Post]

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