A bunch of you here are clearly concerned about the financial impact of the fine on Tesla’s bottom line, but maybe you should consider they could’ve gotten the house straight instead.
Well, shareholders who voiced concerns regarding systemic racism in Tesla sought to actually fix the problem by looking into the arbitration process and making it clear they do not tolerate racism.
I'm afraid some of the comments in this thread are directly advocating against any need for Tesla to address systemic racism, and instead are deeply invested in blaming the victim.
Probably only need 10 people. Say they're paid $300k each. This would be about break even (assuming a 40 year worklife, slightly short) for a lifetime's wages.
Which is a big deal, but hardly <<super>> serious jail time. The risk-reward here looks like it might be a bit skewed. $137 million is not a normal amount of money. It only looks like $130k if you ignore the logarithmic nature of the Hindu-Arabic number system.
$130 million dollars of the award is punitive damages. They aren't supposed to compensate the victim. They are supposed to punish Tesla and force them to follow the law in the future.
The penalty needs to be large enough that it significantly hurts Tesla.
That said, the ratio between the punitive damages and the direct compensation to the victim clearly intends send a message to other companies. Unfortunately, the ones that are able to pay these fines - which they are, effectively - won't ever be persuaded to change their ways, and will continue to seek other legal avenues to shield themselves from their responsibilities.
... so same problem, different layer of abstraction.
Doesn't change the fact that running a company creates a duty of care. It's hard to build safe cars if your workers worry that they're going to get shouted down with something that belongs in the 1920s.
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I really would be keen for a deeper understanding of what went wrong in Tesla's sociotechnical systems that led to someone in such a position of leadership responding exercising power with such little attention to their word choice.
People have a right to form groups and freely interact with others to the extent that they chose - that's a right not a privilege.
The absurdity of the arguments in this threat are revealing - HN is normally viscerally against any kind of authoritarian appeal, hacking on cops for arresting actual criminals ... but for this one ... they're supporting coercive and completely disproportionate actions by the state?
Because someone was called some names and meant to feel bad about themselves?
You can see how quickly the hand of angry populist authoritarianism comes out, like a bad religious movement, whenever it triggers some group's sensitivities.
First: If you are in a leadership position, you have a duty of care to the way you practice leadership. And yes, a lot leadership consists of the language you use.
Second: Someone feeling bad isn’t the problem here. The problem is choosing words which set company cultural norms to be hostile to employees based on unchangeable characteristics of their birth unrelated to the purpose of the group.
Third: People do have a right to form groups and a wide range of norms they have a right to set within those groups. That right is constrained by certain responsibilities —- one of which is to be less racist!
No, not really. Just because you managed to put together a business model and get an investor to trust you with some cash that does not mean you have a greenlight from society to act as racist and as sexist as you desire. Everyone around you still has the right to be treated with respect and not be subjected to any sort of abuse, specially those that are actively working to validate your business and make you rich.
In fact, allowing for a racist/sexist work environment to fester is an incredibly stupid move, as you're hindering productivity and limiting your access to skilled employees.
"They didn't put in the accessibility ramp - stop capitalism now!"
So once again - hyperbole - this time with a strawman thrown in for good measure.
Nobody is remotely suggesting someone shouldn't be able to go to work and not be called racial slurs.
The issue is a) to what degree this is systematic and a part of company function and b) proportionality.
The ruling is unreasonable and stupid, it's driven by greed, ideology and a 'law by litigation' approach to everything, which doesn't bode well for anyone.
The federal court already concluded that the racism problem at Tesla was widespread and systematic, and was aided by the company's internal arbitration process which was bad enough that a Tesla shareholder voiced concerns it "enabled harassment and other problems".
The proportionality was obviously well justified, given that the bulk of it corresponded to punitive damages. The whole point of punitive damages is to punish the defendant, which is a company with an estimated market value of 800 billion dollars.
If there was any doubt regarding how well justified was the decision, you can simply look at how the ruling motivated Tesla's shareholders to address its racism and harassment problem right in their shareholder's meeting. This has been a long lasting problem at Tesla which has been festering for years, with multiple similar complaints handled (and muffled) internally, but it took this court ruling to finally get the company to address it.
I'm not disagreeing that the state should be given limited to zero say on the assembly of people but companies should not be framed as the counterweight against authoritarianism but another manifestation of it.
I don't think that, but I lack the communication skill to be sufficiently clear to avoid being misunderstood in this medium on this topic.