It's amazing how big the settlements are for discrimination lawsuits vs. other labor law violations. Wage and hour violations get a slap on the wrist. Safety violations seldom cost a company more than a few thousand dollars unless someone is killed, and even then payments rarely exceed 5 figures.
Discrimination lawsuits in the US are supposed to be torts I believe, which is what allows you to have these big settlements (think McDonalds coffee too hot, that was a tort) I would think that Safety violations may also be torts - but probably not all the time.
The McDonald's coffee incident is often cited as an example of litigation and punitive damages gone mad. Some woman got scalded by her coffee? And she was awarded how much?
It's less often noted just how badly the woman was injured (third degree burns, significant amounts of skin seared off, etc.) and the details of why McDonald's was held liable (dangerous policy, not an isolated mistake).
I certainly agree that McDonald's got what it deserved, hope you don't think I was implying otherwise.
on edit: actually I think the ability to sue for torts is one of the pluses of the American system, and is definitely better than a lot of other supposedly fairer countries.
McDonald got the verdict it deserved, but later appeals reduced the sum to a much lower value IIRC not even covering the total medical expenses + lawyers.
>The judge reduced punitive damages to $480,000, three times the compensatory amount, for a total of $640,000. The decision was appealed by both McDonald's and Liebeck in December 1994, but the parties settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.
I would think that the settlement out of court was less than 640000, because it was McDonalds that was appealing, thus for them to drop it they would have to pay less than what they were going to anyway (I suppose)
It also says
>Liebeck died on August 5, 2004, at age 91. According to her daughter, "the burns and court proceedings (had taken) their toll" and in the years following the settlement Liebeck had "no quality of life". She said the settlement had paid for a live-in nurse.
So I think it was still significantly more than the 160,000 the suit was originally for in order to afford a nurse.
I've never understood this. She bought hot coffee, put it between her legs, and spilled it. If I'd done that, I would feel foolish and blame no one but myself. What reasonable person is surprised that coffee is served hot enough to scald you?
> Liebeck acknowledged that the spill was her fault. What she took issue with was that the coffee was so ridiculously hot — at up to 190 degrees Fahrenheit [88C], near boiling point — that it caused third-degree burns on her legs and genitals, nearly killing her and requiring extensive surgery to treat.
> McDonald’s apparently knew that this was unsafe. In the decade before Liebeck’s spill, McDonald’s had received 700 reports of people burning themselves. McDonald’s admitted that its coffee was a hazard at such high temperatures. But it continued the practice, enforced by official McDonald’s policy, of heating up its coffee to near-boiling point. (McDonald’s claimed customers wanted the coffee this hot.)
> Liebeck didn’t want to go to court. She just wanted McDonald’s to pay her medical expenses, estimated at $20,000. McDonald’s only offered $800, leading her to file a lawsuit in 1994.
> After hearing the evidence, the jury concluded that McDonald’s handling of its coffee was so irresponsible that Liebeck should get much more than $20,000, suggesting she get nearly $2.9 million to send the company a message. Liebeck settled for less than $600,000. And McDonald’s began changing how it heats up its coffee.
>Since Liebeck, McDonald's has not reduced the service temperature of its coffee. McDonald's current policy is to serve coffee at 176–194 °F (80–90 °C),[38] relying on more sternly worded warnings on cups made of rigid foam to avoid future liability, though it continues to face lawsuits over hot coffee.
> According to Dr. Fredericka Brown and Dr. Kenneth Diller, mechanical engineering professors at The University of Texas at Tyler, the optimal temperature range for serving hot beverages is between 125°F and 136°F. Their research shows that although there are varying preferences regarding the optimal temperature for beverage consumption, drinking a hot beverage outside of this range can negatively impact taste and cause physical discomfort. In some cases, drinking beverages that are above this temperature range can lead to serious burns to the mouth, tongue, and esophagus.
> Hot beverages such as tea, hot chocolate, and coffee are frequently served at temperatures between 160 degrees F (71.1 degrees C) and 185 degrees F (85 degrees C). Brief exposures to liquids in this temperature range can cause significant scald burns. However, hot beverages must be served at a temperature that is high enough to provide a satisfactory sensation to the consumer. This paper presents an analysis to quantify hot beverage temperatures that balance limiting the potential scald burn hazard and maintaining an acceptable perception of adequate product warmth.
Of course the temperature you make coffee at, and the temperature you serve coffee at, and the temperature you drink coffee at, may not all be the same.
One should also keep in mind the serving container: some retain heat more than others, and so the temperature drop gradient may be different and should probably be considered as well.
You shouldn't use boiling water to make coffee unless you want it to be bitter.
General rule is you want 195-205F water, so you boil, wait 30 seconds, bloom the coffee, wait another 30 seconds, make the coffee.
Finished coffee is around around 185-188F when I use a french press or pourover, I assume the air, container, and the grounds all absorb some of the heat. After about 5 minutes its a very drinkable ~160.
Heated not necessarily to 100˚C. Just a raising the temperature. It's also why there are temperature-controlled kettles (in addition to 'simple' ones that are just on/off):
Show me a high quality espresso machine that at the time of extraction has boiling water contacting the portafilter. I'll save you the trouble, because no such machine exists.
My point was it’s very obvious that boiling water is part of making coffee I’m shocked at the willed ignorance so that we can all pretend McDonalds was negligent.
But it’s mental gymnastics. I’m not sure why. I assume some anti-corporate/big company sentiment.
I don't think it's mental gymnastics. The key fact of what I'm trying to argue here, and the lawsuit against mcdonald's, is that at the time, McDonald's was keeping the resting temperature of the coffee far too hot. Not only far hotter than any other location in the same town that sold coffee, but also, as I'm trying to demonstrate, hotter than coffee produced in a normal pour-over process.
It's unreasonable for customers to assume that McDonald's coffee is significantly hotter than every other coffee on the market, and also hotter than fresh coffee they make themselves at home.
I don't really have strong opinions on the "McDonald's kept the coffee near boiling so that people wouldn't request refills in store" bit, since it doesn't make a whole lot of sense as black coffee is dirt cheap and making it hotter only encourages people to consume more cream, which is expensive. Reasoning aside though, it's pretty obvious why McDonald's was found liable.
I used to get McDonald's coffee back in those days (to go to work digging ditches), and it was incredibly irritating how long it would take for the damn stuff to cool down so it didn't burn your mouth. Since I have ADHD and a low tolerance for waiting for my caffeine I would drink it, burn the skin of the inside of my mouth, curse out McDonalds, and continue drinking because caffeine!
Also crappy lids. The modern ones have a kind of button that you push and it doesn't really exert an upwards force on the lid. In those days, you had to peel part of the plastic up and away from the lid and it was easy to take the lid off by accident. I don't think that was a major part of the lawsuit, but practically anyone who was a teen or adult in North America at the same time had an experience of spilling McDonalds coffee or hot chocolate.
Well these are well known facts to any kid who is beyond first experience with styrofoam cups, heck apart from appalling chemistry being leaked into drink, I do actually prefer cups that keep temperature longer when ordering drinks. That's the whole purpose if styrofoam here. Heck, there is whole business around thermal mugs for exactly this purpose. Same would be valid for standard tea - you start with cca 100C and its actually how it should be. If you don't like it hot, order something else or go someplace else.
If we would be talking about case of little kid not knowing this type of cup burning themselves, even way less than she did, then that's a completely different story. Or was she also somehow mentally impaired to not understand hot=bad in groin? But as facts are presented, people do themselves harm with stuff that is well known and expected to cause harm.
If I let chainsaw in my lap and accidentally start it somehow via normal way it should be started, well that would be also life-changing injury, and result of my utter stupidity and nothing else. I do get I could sue the company making it, and if in US I can actually win but that's ridiculous.
Sorry, as much as I hate corporations including McDonald for many, many of their transgressions, this one is properly ridiculous even with all the facts stated and all the time passed. There is no end to people getting themselves injured or killed every single effin' day, even right now, doing stupid things with dangerous stuff. Some internet sites are just endless daily streams of records of that, and its pretty damn crazy. So instead of lesson being 'be careful with dangerous stuff, the dangerous part is serious', we bend reality backwards so hot coffee is not hot, just warm, because somebody will put it in their laps, or throw it on another person, or will pour it over their face.
Instead of saying ie - McDonald, please present 2 types of cups, one for people like me, call it 'hot that lasts' and charge extra 20c for it as an added value, and another 'warm coffee that won't burn ya even if you shower in it'. I really don't see actual moral lesson for McDonald in this case. A little bit of personal responsibility expected from citizens would be much, much better lesson for society as a whole.
Nobody drinks tea anywhere near 100C; that’s absurd. Ideal tea drinking temperature is between 57 and 65C, anything higher risks throat damage [1]. All but the blackest teas will fail to brew if held at 100C for the duration of steeping.
Coffee usually isn't kept near boiling after being made. That actually causes some chemical reactions in the coffee to speed up and makes it more bitter quickly
1. Styrofoam cups are good heat insulators, so touching the cup does not communicate how hot the contents are.
2. Management intentionally made the coffee too hot. Making the coffee too hot to drink meant people would not get refills because they would drink it more slowly. This is the company knowingly do something unsafe for profit.
3. The award was the amount of money McDonald's makes on coffee in a single day. It seems like a lot of money, but a very small amount for the giant.
The real nail here is that mgmt sent emails explicitly about number 2.
Okay: the actual proximate cause of the burn was the heat of the liquid. As far as I know, they were not required to, nor did they, reduce the temperature. Nor should they have; to reduce the temperature of the coffee to a level low enough where she would not have received third-degree burns would require brewing and/or holding at a temperature low enough to negatively impact the quality.
That case is a study in how a sympathetic plaintiff affects the outcome.
As I mentioned in another comment, keeping coffee at a high temperature actually reduces the quality by speeding up chemical reactions that make it more bitter. Keeping it at a low temperature (around 50C) prevents this so your interpretation of how the temperature relates to quality is entirely backwards
That coffee does not exist in a vacuum. The temperature at which people want to drink it, and when, is part of this as well, probably even more important, and requiring reheating is the worst of all worlds.
Also, you would likely be hard-pressed to tell the difference in bitterness given the relatively short maximum holding times (two hours in the steel urn, half an hour in the glass pot) and how much coffee the average breakfast goes through (it will be hanging out a lot less time than the maximum). Remember, this is McDonald's. The coffee being a bit more bitter won't result in complaints. The coffee being not hot enough will.
I am suggesting that most people either do not drink the coffee immediately, instead relying on it to be just right by the time they get to home or work (most business at a McDonald's happens in the drive through), or they load it with chilled cream, which will decrease its temperature but not low enough to be objectionable, which it would noticeably be were the holding temperatures meaningfully decreased to the point where Stella would not have received third-degree burns.
Again: it should tell you something that they were not required to, nor did they, lower their holding temperature as a result of this.
I’m way out of my area of expertise here, so posting this comment mostly in the hope to solicit someone who is more knowledgeable to expand on it…
A commenter on a previous post a few months ago pointed out that different countries/legal systems have different approaches that I think they may have referred to as punitive vs restorative? And even in systems with both, certain classes of crimes may only be able to approach sentencing from on of those approaches. Which can mean the outcome is more about making the aggrieved party whole again (with potentially a little extra for the inconvenience). It leaves no room for the kind of very very large outcome that acts as a signal to the defendant and any others to not break this law again.
I was wondering about this. I'm equally not an expert in law. Are there three classes of punishment: punitive, tort, and restorative? Are punitive and restorative mutually exclusive?
A tort is a type of lawsuit. "Restorative" damages aren't a thing except maybe in some odd legal jurisdiction (inb4 Louisiana, because the french) or niche subset of law. You have compensatory and punitive damages. They are not mutually exclusive. Compensatory damages are to make the injured party financially whole. Punitive damages are awarded by the court and basically serve as a "don't do this" fine.
how much did Musk pay to get to force the founders of Tesla to allow Musk to say he was a cofounder? Reputation is hard to maintain but something you can buy
It doesn't really need a citation at all. It's pretty standard for people to be considered as "founders" even if they weren't the first person to be involved in the first incarnation of a business. The only reason this particular instance got any attention is because of the lawsuit.
If you're curious, pick a few companies at random and dig into their history. You might be surprised by how late some of their "founders" became involved in the business.
Calling Musk a founder would be the equivalent of calling Paul Graham an Airbnb cofounder.
He was an early investor in Tesla in February 2003 after the first employee had already been hired and the prototype car was already built off the Lotus.
Except that if I was a racialized person and saw scrawled swastikas in my place of employment, I might very reasonably start to be concerned about my actual safety. The law clearly says that the employer is liable for a hostile work environment. So a damage award in that range really doesn't seem that excessive.
I don't know any of the detail, but I don't see how this symbol interpreted as a threat of violence should receive a larger award than an actual death, which is what the person you're replying to was saying. Have I misunderstood?
Pay for death is complicated. Im many ways, it's an apples-to-oranges punishment: no amount of money can bring someone back from the dead, so one could argue that no amount of payment is appropriate (or inappropriate) for a death. Assuming we accept the premise "Sorry your loved one is irrevocably gone; here's a sack of cash" is fair:
It is, perhaps, the case that since the laws against workplace-caused deaths are older, their damage values have been pinned to lower pre-inflation numbers and the right response to "How can a hostile-work-environment suit cost the company more than a workplace death?" is to increase punitive payments for deaths.
> Wage and hour violations get a slap on the wrist
It's very easy to calculate financial harm, and for an individual worker, even multiplying that harm by 10x isn't going to be a "significant" amount for a large-ish company.
In this random case, the company was ordered to pay the wages and then the same amount on top of that for the damage caused[1], so it was 2x total.
> Safety violations seldom cost a company more than a few thousand dollars unless someone is killed, and even then payments rarely exceed 5 figures.
This isn't true. Just looking at some random, low-profile cases, you can easily find awards in the six figures[2].
> He very specifically said unless someone is killed.
And if you read... the rest of that very sentence... he notes that the penalty in such cases is effectively capped at $100,000. You quote him saying it. And then you rebut it by saying you can find penalties below $1,000,000, which isn't much of a rebuttal.
Looks like being discriminated against in this case is roughly worth the same as having a limb cutoff according to one law firm. I don't want to be presumptuous and say that feeling discrimination on the job is better than having your arm cut off though, maybe it does feel worse.
Your own link gives lots of examples where compensation was much greater than $3M depending on the severity of the injury.
$8,000,000 Verdict: The plaintiff lost three fingers and underwent numerous surgeries to save her hand. A conveyor belt was detected to have a defect and caught her hand in it, leading to extremely debilitating damages.
$150,000 Verdict: While he was operating machinery in a school, the plaintiff severed the tip of his finger. Thanks to the efforts of medical professionals, the finger was reattached; when he pursued legal action, he was found partially at fault and had a 35% reduction of his verdict.
$1,200,000 Settlement: A young boy, age 11, suffered partial leg amputations after being struck by a train. He was playing on the railroad tracks and was caught. A Minneapolis jury was set to hear the case, but a settlement was reached beforehand.
$400,000 Settlement: A 45-year-old man in Minnesota was working on a tri-roller machine at a bakery when the rollers snatched his glove. His arm was pulled into the machine, causing irreparable damages that resulted in amputation below his elbow.
$325,000 Verdict: A man, nearly 40 years old, suffered an amputation after the cast he wore on his broken arm was applied too tightly, causing ischemia.
$5,000,000 Settlement: A man was struck by a semi-truck while on his motor bike. The crash caused severe damages to his leg. Despite numerous surgeries, the leg could not be adequately fixed, and was amputated below the knee.
Yes they give all those, right after they indicate an average of $3.2M for an arm. They give you averages first so you can see the figures posted later are some better case scenarios (well for comp anyway).
Maybe someone with experience here can chime in, but my gut tells me those must be the worker's compensation insurance payout for the limb and the lawyer was including the surrounding lawsuit which would litigate the neglect resulting in the loss of limb.
Agree. 15m achieves two things: not a lot of money in Tesla terms but enough that it is noticed and would be a motivation to avoid similar claims. And enough after legal costs that the plaintiff never has to work there again.
> Tesla has denied the charges that the situation was as bad as alleged in the two suits, but it has admitted there were problems which needed to be addressed at the plant [...] We do recognize that in 2015 and 2016 we were not perfect. We’re still not perfect. But we have come a long way from 5 years ago.
Discrimination lawsuits are not exactly an easy thing to win, it usually becomes unbearable long before it's overt enough you can take it to court. If we're at the point where he won and this is by the VPs own admission significantly better than 5 years ago then good lord.
> Discrimination lawsuits are not exactly an easy thing to win
To expand upon this. You not only have to prove that a, e.g., policy or manager's behavior, resulted in negative effects distributed along racial lines but also that there was racist intent behind that policy or behavior.
This is a lot more than "neglecting to address racial biases"
> To expand upon this. You not only have to prove that a, e.g., policy or manager’s behavior, resulted in negative effects distributed along racial lines but also that there was racist intent behind that policy or behavior.
No, you don’t. Once you show that a policy creates concrete disadvantage on racial lines, to overcome liability the employer must prove a sufficient business justification. (Griggs v. Duke Energy, the case often misrepresented as prohibiting IQ tests in employment, instead established that rule.)
If you can establish specific intent regarding creating racial disadvantage, then no business justification can overcome that, but you don’t have to establish that to establish unlawful discrimination.
If you wanna get into the weeds, it's "disparate treatment discrimination" that requires “intent,” whereas disparate impact discrimination does not.
But this is maybe a useless discussion about the technical requirements. In practice winning a case without proving intent is extremely rare from what I've read
The suit is regarding discrimination that occurred in 2015-2016; the VP was saying that they had improved since then rather than that they had improved for 5 years to get to that point.
I don't think that is fair. I don't think he has pushed a culture of racism but one of rapid growth. That rapid growth has allowed racism to grow unchecked, and that is a failure of management at the highest level. But, to say that is the same as joining the klan goes beyond hyperbole.
I don't care what caused it, right now he is denying there is a culture of racism that needs to be weeded out despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. I am not saying elon is neccesarily racist but his denial of it and obvious pepetuation of it (and this isn't being called names, look at the actual suits, this is the shit you see in jim crow era movies) means if you support him knowing this you support that also. You can admire his accomplishments but you can't support only part of someome, you support all of this stuff too.
The klan made theit stance obvious they didn't hide it. That's what I am encouraging, if you're going to support racism don't hide behind meaningless excuses.
That $15M he turned down is looking pretty good right now.
“In October 2021, a jury awarded him $137 million in damages in the case, but a federal judge threw out that award as excessive. US District Judge William Orrick offered Diaz $15 million in damages in the case instead, but Diaz rejected the offer, choosing instead to have a new trial.”
Since 2021, the damages have been calculated by the brilliant minds of our legal system as $137 million, $15 million, and now $3 million. But don't you dare question the outcome in the comments here, this is serious lawyer stuff.
Hell of a hustle the lawyers have built. They manage a cartel that is slow, labor inefficient and has horrendous quality control.
(I almost forgot, the cartel requires I tell you I am not a member of their cartel and this is not cartel advice. If I don't tell you this, they will send someone to hurt me financially)
I'll never understand the "just words" takes I hear all the time.
Everything you've ever said is "just words". Everything someone has said that has hurt you, that has caused fear in you, that evoked love and warmth has ever been " just words".
How many of those words changed your life? The "I dos", the last words, the first words, the words said in a dark alley or the words said to you pushed up against a wall.
Words tell you what someone thinks of you, what they'll do to you.
I, for example, don't think very much of your comment.
I've never been awarded any money because somebody said something to me I didn't like.
Yes words can have consequences. Let's take politics, some parties get elected based on their words, and then implement policies that are harmful to me. I still never got any kind of compensation for that kind of thing.
How much money should ehticalsmacker be awarded from you, because you not thinking much of his comment hurt his feelings?
When you facetiously equate my comment with the harm perpetuated by someone actively racially discriminating against someone, do you expect me to take your argument in good faith?
Perhaps you can explain the relevancy of your comment?
Your comment suggests you think financial payment to an HN user with hurt feelings due to another user "not thinking much of his comment" is either good or justified.
I find that hard to believe.
On the other hand, decades ago the US decided that it's neither good nor justified to have a hostile work environment - something I agree with - and put laws and systems into place to enforce that belief.
That's what the lawsuit is about.
Yet I also find it hard to believe you support a hostile work environment.
That makes your comment seen like neither here nor there.
Your argument was that "so and so did break the law". I answered that just because something is a law, it isn't good or correct. If you don't see the relevancy, I don't know what else to tell you.
I don't think people should pay other users because of their comments. On the contrary, my argument was that they shouldn't have to pay.
As for hostile work environments, my opinion is that people should simply quit their jobs if they are unhappy with their work environment. I don't think governments should interfere with how companies conduct their business.
I even think racism should be legal. Don't get me wrong - I don't like racism. But the government shouldn't be allowed to tell people who they have to like or dislike. If somebody doesn't want to work with somebody else because they don't like their nose or whatever, it should be in their rights to refuse to work with them. In general, people should be allowed to do with their money as they please, so also to pay for work who they want.
One thing I heard is that the guy in question here even tried to get a relative a position at Tesla, which seems odd if he thought the work environment was so bad. Not sure if that is true, though.
It would be easier if you simply wrote "we need to get rid of all employee rights laws."
> Your argument was that
No, my argument was that the two situations are not meaningfully comparable. I then explained why.
Even if the law isn't good or correct, the two situations are still not meaningfully comparable, because the awarded damages requires that the law exist.
> simply quit their jobs if they are unhappy with their work environment
Ahh, sounds like a libertarian in favor of the Lochner era. I strongly disagree with what I see as a naive belief in the freedom of contract.
As you correctly point out, it means allowing racial and sexual discrimination in the workplace, with people like Oncale quitting his job with Sundowner because "I felt that if I didn't leave my job, that I would be raped or forced to have sex."
That's the freedom of contract you want.
Those were not good times to be an lowly employee. I suppose they were great times to be a manager and business owner, if you didn't care much about others.
> get a relative a position at Tesla, which seems odd if he thought the work environment was so bad
] After several months at Tesla, Diaz recommended that his son (and former plaintiff) Demetric Di-Az come to work at the Tesla facility. See, e.g., Tr. at 503:8-16. He testified that he “did believe he would be in a different location” so the situation might be different for him. Id. at 503:11-19. He said that he could not recall whether he warned Di-Az about the racial harassment. Id. at 504:5-11. At one point, Diaz witnessed a white supervisor yell at Demetric that, “I can't stand all you [fucking] [N-words].” Id. at 419:18-24. Diaz said that it “broke” him. Id. at 420:1. He testified that, if he had to do it over again, he would not have recommended that Demetric work there, calling it his “biggest mistake.” Id. at 420:2-5.
Note that his son was a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit. The opinion doesn't say why it was dismissed, but the other co-plaintiff settled the case with Telsa.
Of course the situations are comparable. Your only explanation was that there is a law for the one situation but (allegedly) not the other. Which probably isn't even true, as you may be able to sue people over insults (ianal).
> As you correctly point out, it means allowing racial and sexual discrimination in the workplace, with people like Oncale quitting his job with Sundowner because "I felt that if I didn't leave my job, that I would be raped or forced to have sex.
Why would you want to continue working for somebody who wants to force you to have sex?
>Those were not good times to be an lowly employee. I suppose they were great times to be a manager and business owner, if you didn't care much about others.
In a good economy, you can find another job. In a bad economy, as socialism is notorious to bring about, you can't. So congrats, you are entitled to keep your job with the boss who wants to rape you.
> While I haven't read much about the case, it's clear you've read far less
"He believed he would be in another location" - so he didn't believe Tesla was racist at heart?
How can you judge what is harmful to me? You personally are no general metric to all mankind. In fact, what you just wrote made me suicidal now since your words hurt me very badly and triggered massive childhood trauma which I barely survived but haven't told about to anybody due to shame. Your words hurt me that much. You can't question it, since you have no idea what is happening on my side. If you try to diminish the harm you have already done, you are causing me even more harm.
To compensate this harm, I am suing you for 3 billions $$ + legal fees, since I know you are not poor and come to HN. My lawyers will contact you.
And there you go, you just did exactly what you criticize on others and put yourself above somebody else. Hell, that's another trauma for me, now its 4 billions since I have panic attack now from your toxic posts.
Of course, none of that is actually going to happen, there is no general legal basis for "Someone owes me money because they said a thing that made me sad online in a debate website I voluntarily visit in my leisure time for (one assumes) entertainment or educational value," and your explanation of why it would happen indicates massive ignorance of the legal framework relevant to this thread topic.
I always find it interesting when people who are willing to accept the arbitrariness of the LISP interpreter or JavaScript's market dominance or the C++ curiously recurring template pattern get shocked or surprised that the United States' framework of law and legal precedent is arbitrary and path-dependent and does not conform to their (also arbitrary and path-dependent) sense of fairness.
"... the anti-discrimination statutes are not a general civility code, Federal law does not prohibit simple teasing, off-hand comments, or isolated incidents that are not extremely serious. Rather, the conduct must be so objectively offensive as to alter the conditions of the individual’s employment."
The juries - in two different trials! - have determined that the conduct at Tesla meets that threshold.
Tesla is legally obligated to prevent workplace harassment, and respond to complaints about harassment. They did not do so. Punitive damages for Tesla's illegal behavior form the large part of the awarded amount.
Musk has claimed on Twitter that Tesla wasn't allowed to present new evidence, and that the fine would have been 0 with the new evidence. But he says the jury did the best with the given evidence and he respects their decision.
I think there is more to the story than CNN reports, also, just because something has been made into a law, it isn't beyond discussion or criticism. There are many bad laws in existence.
I recommend doing one's own research on this topic; the well is quite deep. Musk's greatest talent is salesmanship; that sometimes divorces from the truth.
The usual list. He clearly isn't a leftist and it angers a lot of people very much that he doesn't automatically follow the leftist commands. Doesn't make him evil or a liar. And for example making a prediction that turns out wrong also isn't a lie. It is just an opinion.
You can keep defending him if you want, but the preponderance of evidence is not on his side. On average, I would no longer consider Elon Musk a reliable source.
1.) he doesn't have to justify reinstating Trump at all. People who banned a sitting president have to justify their actions
2.) Seriously, what the fuck - you want to hold his dying child against him? This is ridiculous nitpicking, you can say "it died in his arms" even if he wasn't holding his child all the time. You should take a long hard look into the mirror and ponder what your irrational hatred does to your personality.
3.) A couple of cars with a tiny discount proves what? A list of 30 cars, with a generously calculated average discount of 3%, out of probably thousands sold?
I don't hate Musk. By-and-large, he earned his way into the money he's made.
... but some of that earning was done via deception. Look at the history of billionaire CEOs, and you quickly learn that bending or breaking with the truth is pretty much mandatory at some point in their careers to win the game. They are salespeople for the firms they helm, and a certain amount of sales is based on deception (information asymmetry is the beating heart of the engine of profit).
If anything, one can tip one's hat to him for winning the game he's playing so well. The game itself may be of questionable virtue, but he's an excellent player of it.
(Possibly except for this Twitter acquisition. That was a weird move. I don't think it's working out the way he'd hoped).
The only lie he tells consistently that I hold against him is Tesla's FSD. Even the name is incorrect in terms of what the technology is capable of, and it's a lie that gets naive people killed when they believe the marketing hype and turn over full control of their vehicle to a technology that is not yet reliable.
Iirc there was one event that might qualify as deception, when he claimed he already had funding secured from some entity and that made some other entity (the government?) also give him funding. That first entity ended up also giving him funding.
Can't say I rank that very high in terms of deceptions, as it doesn't involve the actual product, and also, in the end it was true that entity 1 also gave them funding. And entity 2 could have given funding under the condition that entity 1 gives funding, to be safe.
As for FSD, as far as I know it is still officially in beta and they officially say you can't rely on it just yet. I don't share his optimism for its development, but it seems conceivable that he legitimately thought it was doable in the timeframe he imagined. I don't think missing delivery dates really counts as lie. Companies do it all the time, even companies like Apple. They announce they are working on product x and expect to have it ready at time y, and frequently they miss the date y by years of sometimes even scrap the product completely.
I also haven't heard of an increase in accidents because of Tesla FSD. The accidents that happens seem to all make the news and on close scrutiny turn out to be nothingburgers.
Edit: this seems to suggest that Teslas with autopilot have far fewer accidents than normal cars https://www.notateslaapp.com/news/1144/teslas-using-autopilo... - I supposer you can find all sorts of other statistics, though. I haven't really looked into them. Googling, one finds many headlines of the sort "most vehicles involved in automated driving accidents are Teslas" which are of course misleading bullshit, as presumably that is just an artefact of the much higher number of Teslas on the road.
> The jury heard that the Tesla factory was saturated with racism. Diaz faced frequent racial abuse, including the N-word and other slurs. Other employees harassed him. His supervisors, and Tesla's broader management structure, did little or nothing to respond. And supervisors even joined in on the abuse, one going so far as to threaten Diaz and draw a racist caricature near his workstation. ...
> On Diaz's second day of work, Diaz saw the N-word scratched into a bathroom stall. Id. at 401:6-12. Over the course of his employment, more racist bathroom graffiti was added. Id. at 403:5-15. He encountered swastikas and the phrase “death to all [N-words].” ...
> The jury, in special verdicts, found that: (1) Tesla subjected Diaz to a racially hostile work environment, (2) Tesla was a joint employer of Diaz, (3) Diaz was subject to a hostile work environment caused by a supervisor, (4) Diaz was subject to a hostile work environment caused by a non-immediate supervisor or co-worker, (5) Tesla committed a civil rights violation in a contractual relationship, (6) Tesla failed to take all reasonable steps necessary to prevent Diaz from being subject to racial harassment, and (7) Tesla negligently supervised or negligently continued to employ Ramon Martinez and that action harmed Diaz. ...
> The weight of the evidence is against Tesla's minimization of Diaz's emotional and psychological harm. Diaz testified about the severe consequences he experienced during his time at the factory. See supra Background, Section II.E. Jones similarly testified about the effects on her father. Id. And his psychological expert confirmed all of this, including by performing psychological evaluations to determine whether Diaz was “overreporting” his symptoms. Id. The jury, in short, had ample basis to believe Diaz's testimony that he was severely emotionally harmed.
Given that two different jury trials found Diaz's claims valid, what should the law be to prevent this level of hostile workplace environment?
If $3 million in punitive damages too large, and you think it a smaller one is more reasonable, how much is enough to deter Telsa from having a hostile work environment in the future?
Maybe his colleagues didn't like Diaz much. I don't approve of such slurs, on the other hand, I am in favor of free speech and people being in charge of their own companies.
Lousy lawyers - ianal, Musk said they were not allowed to present new evidence. No idea what was going on. Certainly there are judgements in the US legal system that seem wrong. It is not a perfect system.
> I am in favor of free speech and people being in charge of their own companies.
About half a century ago, after some difficult (and in some cases bloody) fights, the United States passed several laws curtailing some liberties a company owner may take with how they run their affairs with the aim of a net societal good. They are pretty well-constrained, place little burden on companies overall, and have the net effect of allowing a double-digit-percentage of working Americans of having a fair shot at doing the work they must do every day to make wage free of a kind of psychological torment that their peers are never at risk of experiencing daily.
It was certainly a curtailment of freedom of speech and expression. It was a curtailment of such with significant positive outcomes and made the country a better place.
Nothing I've seen about the way we are today suggests to me that rolling back the clock on those laws would be a net good.
That's your opinion as a probably left leaning person. Other people may think differently. That such laws were passed 50 years ago does not prove that they were a net positive.
Totally agree. They're the law right now, and if you're looking to change that, there is a process to do so. I haven't heard any explanation of how removing them would improve America other than "it would take us back to how things were before, which was better," which is a non-starter.
...And you will be fought every step of the way, as the people who got the laws first passed were fought every step of the way. Of course, I hope you fail, as I've never heard an explanation of how repealing those laws would improve things.
The explanation is simple: freedom. People forget that when they curb the freedom of their employers, they also curb their own freedoms at the same time. They make sure that they can never escape from the hamster wheel. Of course most people are happy as long as other people are not better off than they themselves, so being stuck in the hamster wheel doesn't bother them that much.
More freedom also means more potential businesses who have to compete for workers, which is good for the workers. If businesses have to compete, they'll try to make things as nice as possible for the workers.
The argument that things would become what they "were before" doesn't make that much sense. In a poor economy, things are poorly, no matter what socialist laws try to prevent it (worker protection only helps you if you have a job, for example). There is no reason that by abandoning some law from the 50 years ago, the economy would fall back to the state of the 80ies. Also maybe the 80ies weren't actually so bad. I'm too lazy to look it up, but I keep hearing that in the old days, people could afford to buy houses and feed a family on a single salary.
I'm sure you can get better explanations and economic theories. You have never heard an explanation because you have never looked for it or listened to one, not because none exist.
Or do you also respect the freedom of employees to engage in collective bargaining, the freedom of employees to negotiate a closed shop with the company, the freedom to engage in solidarity and political strikes, the freedom to carry out secondary boycotts, and so on.
Most of those are prohibited by law, where 100 years ago they were legal. And they didn't require a special law to enable those powers, because they grew out of the right to quit one's job.
> If businesses have to compete, they'll try to make things as nice as possible for the workers.
Which is why businesses don't like to compete, and will form cartels and informal agreements to prevent competition.
> I'm too lazy to look it up, but I keep hearing that in the old days, people could afford to buy houses and feed a family on a single salary.
We also had a lot higher tax rate on the wealth. And stronger union power. If you're going to lazily cherry pick history, then there are a lot of cherries to pick from.
Everybody can start a company - or should be allowed to, that is the point. Socialist rules making it difficult prevent people from becoming independent.
> Or do you also respect the freedom of employees to engage in collective bargaining, the freedom of employees to negotiate a closed shop with the company, the freedom to engage in solidarity and political strikes, the freedom to carry out secondary boycotts, and so on.
People should be free to do that, but "employers" should also be free to fire them if they do.
> Which is why businesses don't like to compete, and will form cartels and informal agreements to prevent competition.
That works by government intervention and freedom would prevent it.
> We also had a lot higher tax rate on the wealth. And stronger union power. If you're going to lazily cherry pick history, then there are a lot of cherries to pick from.
I am not the person who claimed things were so bad in the past that we must not go back.
This is a country of over three hundred million people. Independence past a certain degree is intractable.
I recommend if you don't like the rules and are too lazy (as you've self-described) to do the hard work to change them, you should consider changing countries. After all, your remedy for employees who don't like working for employers who break the Equal Employment Act is they should change companies.
If that solution seems unpalatable, meditate upon why it is inappropriate to suggest that employees who don't like being discriminated against should just use the remedy of changing employers.
What socialist like you keep forgetting is that somebody has to provide the jobs that you claim the rights to. If nobody provides the jobs, you can make laws all you want, people still won't have jobs.
We've been running that experiment for upwards of a century.
It turns out there are a couple motivating factors for why people form companies, including:
1. There's something they want to do and they need a lot of people to do it
2. They want to make a lot of money
3. They want to set their own work conditions
Socialist policies don't really impact motivation 1 (in fact, they can enhance it; one way American firms are hamstrung relative to their international peers is they have to pay directly for healthcare for their employees, whereas other countries treat that as a national-level responsibility that doesn't come asymmetrically out of various firms' pocketbooks). And motivation 2 is still satisfied if they're making $10 million instead of $10 billion, so long as $10 million is the number you're making when you're "winning the game." Motivation 3 is still very much a liberty that every company owner has, with only a few curtailments (not really any more than the notion that my driver's license gives me liberty to drive on public roads, even though I'm not allowed to drive on the left side of a divided road directly into oncoming traffic).
People have been predicting "socialism will kill the desire to make work for people" for decades as myriad nations have developed stronger government support for citizens' needs, and it hasn't happened. Sooner or later, one has to accept the evidence is against the "socialism kills jobs" hypothesis.
The US has more socialist policies in place right now than ever before, and unemployment is under 4%.
Most companies don't need lots of people. And setting their own work conditions is exactly what is at stake - which also impacts workers, as it also limits their choice of companies to work for. I also doubt wanting to make a lot of money is as common as you think - you can do that more easily in some corporate jobs these days, without the risk.
I don't know the extent of socialism in the US, but it certainly isn't a socialist country yet. Yes, we have run the experiment in the past, and all socialist countries failed spectacularly.
There is no such thing as free health care. Whether companies pay directly or via taxes doesn't really make a difference. The system in the US seems weird in various ways. All the "free health care" systems in other countries seem to be struggling a lot, by the way. None of them is really a proven solution as of now.
> Most companies don't need lots of people. And setting their own work conditions is exactly what is at stake
Great, if they don't need lots of people the Equal Employment Act shouldn't be a problem for them. There's a minimum size on enforcement of the law.
I really think you're overestimating how difficult it is to avoid creating a hostile work environment. You just follow up on reports. That's what you do. There's a whole standardized process to it and every company does it. The fact that Tesla failed to follow it (and failed so hard a jury originally awarded over $100 million in punitive damages, a number speaking to their outrage and disgust at what was allowed to occur) makes Tesla an outlier here.
Point blank: do you think the goal it is trying to achieve is correct but the method is flawed, or do you think the goal (changing, by law, the environment so that an entire demographic of Americans have any hope of having a job without harassment based on unchangeable characteristics they have) is wrong?
> You just follow up on reports. That's what you do.
And then you simply fire the non-liberals involved? Hostile work environment is usually people not getting along. I don't think that is usually easy to solve. You probably have some bias thinking about racists and what not. But even if you just choose to believe all liberal complaints, that enables people to exploit the system. An example would be female execs who seem to always file for "sexism" when they are fired, because why not.
> Point blank: do you think the goal it is trying to achieve is correct but the method is flawed, or do you think the goal (changing, by law, the environment so that an entire demographic of Americans have any hope of having a job without harassment based on unchangeable characteristics they have) is wrong?
I think nobody should be forced to employ somebody they don't want to employ (with their own money - for tax payer money, different rules are necessary). And I don't trust governments to know better how to run companies than the people owning the companies.
> And then you simply fire the non-liberals involved?
This is an odd sentiment and I don't know what to make of it. I'm assuming you don't think only non-liberals can create a hostile work environment, so what do you mean?
> I think nobody should be forced to employ somebody they don't want to employ (with their own money - for tax payer money, different rules are necessary).
As you've mentioned you don't live in the United states, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you don't know our terrible history with racism. The short version is that we had to pass laws after trying myriad other things because, as a principle of a nation where all men are created equal, it was unacceptable that there were entire regions of the country where one simply could not maintain employment if one had the wrong skin color.
It was an ugly fight. They shut down public education in some places during the fight. In some places blood was drawn during the fight.
But in the end, we the people said no.
And that declaration of "no" is tied to a privilege, not a right: the privilege to own a company, which is a legal construct licensed by the government. No one is owed the right to be a company owner, and if one wants to own a company, there are societal obligations they shoulder. Obeying the Equal Rights Act and the Equal Employment Act are such obligations (again, once the company is big enough!), right alongside "obey zoning laws" and "don't dump toxic waste in a river."
It is fundamentally naive to believe this is a problem the market will solve, because this country already tried solving it with the market.
> This is an odd sentiment and I don't know what to make of it. I'm assuming you don't think only non-liberals can create a hostile work environment, so what do you mean?
You claimed it would be easy to create non-toxic workspaces. So I assume you think you only have to fire the non-liberal people. How else do you imagine things to go down? It is also usually the liberals who complain loudly about allegeddly toxic workplaces (while somehow never creating any workplaces themselves - why are all business owners evil, when there seem to be so many good people around?).
Racism - yes I know you had all sorts of
struggles. But I think you are lying when you claim black people could not hold jobs. In the beginning, black people were deported to the US to work. Also I don't think racism is at the core of your country, that is just the modern "Critical Race Theory" bullshit. It is not built around racism. People would rather be left alone.
Here is how you are REALLY wrong, though:
> No one is owed the right to be a company owner
Exactly the opposite: everybody should have that right. That means freedom. Nobody is owed a job, though - who should be obligated to provide that job?
If everybody can be a company owner, so can black people. Are you sure even black company owners would discriminate against black employees? There are many places with predominantly black population in the US, are there really no black owned businesses there?
And you know bloody well that most companies and organisations discriminate in favor of black people these days. You are really overly dramatic in your retelling of the story of racism. The sad thing is that in that way, the real issues are also not being addressed.
> because this country already tried solving it with the market.
I'm sure you misrepresent the actual history very badly here. "The market" would allow black people and also liberals who only love people to create companies and create all the non-toxic work environments they can dream of.
What would be stopping them? Would EVERY bank deny them a credit? Even good people like you, who want to help black people. Aren't there hundreds of millions like you - what would stop you from giving money to black businesses (for example via Kickstarter)?
> People forget that when they curb the freedom of their employers, they also curb their own freedoms at the same time.
Freedom to what, in this context?
> If businesses have to compete, they'll try to make things as nice as possible for the workers.
This is the "capitalism will solve it" argument which proved so untrue we passed the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Employment Act. It turns out that, no, even when it's economically obvious that catering to a minority population would be valuable, you can have 100% of a town refusing to do so because racism is more important to them than money. That creates entire regions of the country that are no-go zones if your skin color is wrong, and we decided that's not acceptable.
> There is no reason that by abandoning some law from the 50 years ago, the economy would fall back to the state of the 80ies.
I'm not concerned about what the economy would do; I'm concerned about whether it would be harder to keep a job free of daily torment if you're the wrong skin color than it is now. My mistake; the law in question isn't 50 years old, it's a 1970s law.
> I'm too lazy to look it up, but I keep hearing that in the old days, people could afford to buy houses and feed a family on a single salary.
If you can find some evidence that the passage of the ERA modified that, feel free to present it. But I'm pretty sure to explain why that changed, you're looking for Reagan-era deregulation (and the economic shift from a manufacturing economy, where unions were strong, to a service economy, where few unions existed).
> You have never heard an explanation because you have never looked for it or listened to one, not because none exist.
Interesting and unsupported hypothesis. But I don't expect you to bring me anything new because you've already declared you're "too lazy to look it up," so I think this conversation thread has ended.
The freedom to work in the way they want. To escape the hamster wheel, for example by starting their own company with the conditions they prefer.
> This is the "capitalism will solve it" argument which proved so untrue we passed the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Employment Act.
It didn't prove untrue. The early days of capitalism where marked by a previous population explosion and abandonment of the feudal system, with lots of people pouring into cities looking for work. That is why there was a lot of poverty.
> That creates entire regions of the country that are no-go zones if your skin color is wrong, and we decided that's not acceptable.
Pretty sure there are lots of No-Go zones for people with the wrong skin color today. At least if your skin color is white.
> I'm concerned about whether it would be harder to keep a job free of daily torment if you're the wrong skin color than it is now.
So you think there wouldn't be any businesses run by black owners? Why not?
> But I'm pretty sure to explain why that changed, you're looking for Reagan-era deregulation
So the economy was better in the past, but your argument was that it was worse?
> Interesting and unsupported hypothesis.
Well everybody who HAS heard explanations knows they exist, so the reason you have not heard of them must be that you wilfully denied their exoistence.
The inability to self-regulate your emotions in response to what other people say is a behavior that you're supposed to outgrow sometime in middle school.
Telling member of systemically opressed group that they should „self-regulate their emotions to what other people say” is something that only person who never experienced what systemic opression really is could say.
We're in the age of self-assigned identity politics, isn't everyone a member of a systemically oppressd group?
Regardless, your race doesn't define you, your experiences do. Your experiences will vary as a black woman in Jamacia, the US, Russia and Egypt. Implying this person is "systemically opressed" is questionable at best.
Some people think racism is bad, and that doing bad things should have some kind of repercussions and that companies have responsibilities around what happens in the workplace. Shocking I know.
Racism created so many problems in the US, including a devastating civil war with 2M casualties, that what seems like an over-reaction is understandable. It's the "nuke it from the orbit" option.
Yes, nuking things from the orbit does have downsides, if you ask me. But if this imperfect tool is something that reliably prevents a new crop of Jim Crow laws, I can tolerate some fallout. (If you think that people are now "civilized by default", and "it can't possibly happen again", look at the Texas abortion law, for instance.)
This is not exactly great, but not as terrible as sundown towns, segregation in schools and in transport, or denying the right to vote.
The US do have problems with large swaths of its Black population, and most of them are, to my mind, (self-)inflicted by segregation and oppression policies ranging from 1880s to 1950s.
> Nonetheless, even on HN you may find segregation is still popular if people think it enforces the right cause.
Restrictions against foreigners buying real estate are pretty much accepted in wide parts of the world, with Canada being the most recent adopter to fend off wealthy Chinese people trying to safeguard their wealth against the CCP.
The issue with Hawaii is that it is (unlike, say, Puerto Rico) an official US State, which means that US citizens should have the right to live and buy/rent/lease real estate there - but at the same time, it does make sense to protect the Native population still existing, similarly to Native American reservations.
Having been to Hawai'i a few times, and having seen how the native population, versus the settlers are doing, I must say, if being a settler in Hawai'i is what life under Jim Crow was, it must have all been rainbows and unicorns and sunshine.
It obviously wasn't, but it's always good to see someone point to the stipulations of an indigenous treaty, while closing both eyes to the context in which it was drafted[1]... Or to the broader context of systemic discrimination that is very actively pissing on people, to this very day.
[1] Reparations for specific, not theoretical damages inflicted on indigenous Hawai'ian people by the government of the United States. But good on you for finding a theoretical[2] loophole! Look, everyone, feast your eyes - Europeans were actually the real victims of discrimination in Hawai'i, circa 1920!
[2] Presumably, there's some European person, somewhere [3], that can prove that half of their family tree[4] traces back to direct decadency from a non-settler European who lived on Hawai'i prior to 1778, and would like to be a beneficiary of the treaty, but isn't actually protected by it!
[3] Somewhere next to a spherical cow, and other pedantic, but utterly theoretical oddities.
[4] Unless you mean to tell us that there was some self-sustaining, secret isolated enclave of Europeans that have lived on Hawai'i prior to 1788, that only intermarried between eachother, I would expect that after a century and a half of intermarriage with native Hawai'ians, nobody either in 1920, or today would ever be able to tell the difference between that 'European' and a native.
> [4] Unless you mean to tell us that there was some self-sustaining, secret isolated enclave of Europeans that have lived on Hawai'i prior to 1788, that only intermarried between eachother, I would expect that after a century and a half of intermarriage with native Hawai'ians, nobody either in 1920, or today would ever be able to tell the difference between that 'European' and a native.
Race-based laws are nonsense, because the concept of "race" itself is a pseudoscientific nonsense. There's no objective way to tell a "race" of many (or maybe even most?) people. Take President Obama for example. What race was he?
What bearing does 'race' have that on anything I said? The law in question solely speaks of 50% pre-1778 Hawai'ian ancestry. It doesn't say anything about 'race' genetics, skin color, hair color, or any other hereditary characteristics. It's a pretty simple question, that does not require unscientific hair-splitting - simply trace up your family tree, and count where your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents lived in 1778.
But since you've asked, Obama does not meet that criteria. His maternal grandparents are from Kansas, and his paternal grandparents are from Africa. Growing up in Hawai'i does not entitle him to those particular reparations settlers chose to grant to Hawai'ian natives.
any descendant of not less than one-half part of the blood of the races inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands previous to 1778
You have to have blood of races that were on the islands before 1778. In practice a commission decides if you're the right race.
Other groups oppressed by plantation owners like the Filipinos and Samoans just get the boot and even less land available to them due to racist policies. Samoan descendants are now even worse off than native Hawiians and have to contend with racially/segregation projected rarefication of land.
I think I agree, but I don't think what you say there is a good argument. You could apply it to hair colour groups (e.g. fair hair, dark hair, red hair) as well to prove the non-existence of hair colour.
The purpose of punitive damages isn't to compensate the injured party _as such_, but to, as the name implies, punish the perpetrator. Now, there's a lot of question of whether this is a _good idea_ (in many European countries, for instance, punitive damages don't exist, and misbehaving companies will instead be subject to fines and other penalties from regulators), but the pro case is more or less "if damages are capped at actual/compensatory damages, then the company may see paying damages for certain bad behaviour as part of the cost of doing business, and make the bad behaviour part of its business model".
It's less about the plaintiff being "offered" $15M (not the way I'd phrase "awarded in a lawsuit") and more about taking from Tesla an amount that would show up on their balance books and have to be explained to investors.
"So, tell us more about how you had to lose $15 million because you can't be bothered to keep your workplace from turning into a Klan-friendly zone? Any plans to prevent that in the future?"
It wasn't because someone was "offended by some words and a drawing".
It was because Tesla broke long-established employment law by supporting a hostile work environment.
Nearly all of the amount is due to punitive damages - $175,000 in damages for emotional distress and $3 million in punitive damages. That's meant to punish Tesla for unlawful activity and deter them from doing so again. (In the original trial it was $6.9 million in compensatory damages and $130 million in punitive damages. That's the amount that then got knocked down to a $15M offer.)
(Two other options to deter this behavior are strong government oversight, and strong unions, but the US has decided to go the court-based punitive damage route instead.)
Scrawled swastikas on the wall are hardly characterized as "some words and a drawing." And Tesla management's lack of activity is part of the problem.
You didn't declare it acceptable, but you certainly did engage in an absolutely breathtaking minimization of the impact of specific acts of hatred on someone subject to systemic racism their whole life as "offended by some words and a drawing."
You're using euphemistic language for rhetorical purposes. Suppose someone got bullied to the point of suicide. Is that not a big deal because it was just "words"? It's a rhetorical sleight of hand to euphemistically label it "words". Also, your choice of language puts the responsibility on the victim ("got offended") as if it's their fault that offence was taken at being discriminated against in the workplace.
Large settlements are good because otherwise there is no incentive for companies to prevent that behavior. The main point of laws and their enforcement is to deter that behavior in the first place, and small settlements do not achieve deterrence.
People love to hate on Musk. What I find bizzare is that 15 years ago it was NickelBack and Justin Beiber. Nowaday it's Bezos/Musk. Not sure if I just don't live in the same circle since I'm twice as old or Tech Bros are the new pop stars.
Doesn't start entirely organic but it ends up being nearly 100% organic hate for certain topics.
Useful idiots start parroting hit campaigns and it becomes "common knowledge" for them which they repeat whenever the topic comes up, creating more useful idiots.
See any "controversial" topic here. Eich/Brave, Elon/Tesla, Facebook/React. It's all the same talking points, some being years old, most being purely emotional/subjective.
If you respond back they'll just call you a paid shill or troll, but if you don't respond back the echo chamber goes unchallenged and makes more useful idiots to parrot those same talking points to restart the cycle.
Funny you mention Nickleback, it was the first time I noticed the hive mind hate. Personally they are a really good band and everyone I know (outside of Reddit) likes them and knows pretty much every single one of their songs, wonder who Chad Kroeger pissed off.
My theory is Chad/Beiber/Murk/Bezos piss off people mostly by over-saturation in media. Imagine you don't like them but then every piece of media keeps talking to you about it non-stop for 5 years. At least they don't play recordings of Musk at the mall, but the amount of articles talking about him is just absolutely insane.
I'm not really sure how you can compare those two. Mocking nickleback was a pseudo-joke like hating pineapple pizza, used for social comfort.
Bezos is not that. It's maybe a bit exaggerated where it might seem like people think he's the worst person, but in reality he's just a name that everybody knows who most people think is a bad person on multiple levels - but the approach to management of quantifying everyone and treating them like machines so that they have wild turnover is something that a lot of people all agree is awful and repugnant.
I'm sure if you want to understand why Musk is hated you can google it, but he clearly courts controversy and tries to get attention by saying outlandish things and it usually backfires. His handling of twitter seems toxic to a lot of people (Just work crazy hard and sleep in the office or you suck!). Then there was the sexual harrassment too right? He never apologizes for any of it that I've seen. Also there are accusations he's manipulated stock prices for a meme. And at this point I think a lot of people think he's too chaotic/random to believe what he says afterall, even if he gave an apology.
Gates is a good counterexample. Either of these people could act like Gates and be less hated.
Its kind of funny to claim 10+ years of fawning press coverage when the reality was that electric cars and by extension Musk go ridiculed and called dangerous and unsafe in the media. The same goes for every little issue with SpaceX.
Coverage of Musk has always been mixed and in main stream media often covered negatively.
Maybe in the more techy press it was mostly positive. But even then, go threw history here on HN. The idea that Tesla was scam and just about to go bankrupt was common wisdom and anybody who disagree got down-voted.
So the idea that positive press coverage is responsible is kind or ridiculous.
Its more like its the endless pro-vs-anti Musk wars that lead to this effect. And that happens in the media as it does on HN.
That's why he showed up alongside Tony Stark in Iron Man 2 and was treated like a god on an episode of Big Bang Theory.
The media, for the most part, treated him gently until the Thai cave incident when people started to catch onto the idea that this "quirky genius" might be an asshole.
There was lots of high profile reporting calling Musk dumb for believing in EV and landing rockets. Media constantly using burning Tesla to show how bad EV are. The most important car show in the world, as mainstream as it gets, shit on Tesla hard. Lots of interviews with former CEOs of car companies explaining how dumb Tesla was.
He's admired by a lot of people who have gotten into trouble for saying bigoted things, who felt that there was nothing wrong with what they said or did (scroll up to see someone complaining that this is about "getting offended by some words and a picture") or refuse to acknowledge concepts like systemic racism...and think they were wronged. Victims of liberals, wokeness, "PC police" and so on.
They see him saying the same sort of things they did, and mistake the ability of an oligarch to escape consequences for almost anything...for "courage" and "free thinking."
>In October 2021, a jury awarded him $137 million in damages in the case, but a federal judge threw out that award as excessive. US District Judge William Orrick offered Diaz $15 million in damages in the case instead, but Diaz rejected the offer, choosing instead to have a new trial.
I'm guessing you are not familiar with the case and only read the CNN coverage.
Employers have responsibilities to maintain certain standards at a workplace. Tesla absolutely flaunted those standards to a ridiculous degree. The first jury on the case awarded over $100 million to the plaintiff.
Go look at the evidence presented in the trial. It's not one bad word being used once.
I'd argue it's a first amendment violation for the state to require an employee be fired or reprimanded for saying/writing mean words; but that's not to say there wasn't more to it than that.
The civil rights act itself is a slap in the face of the 10th amendment and should be repealed post haste.
A jury decided otherwise regarding the correctness of punitive damages.
Once that was decided, such damages don't scale by damage done; they scale by a figure that would inconvenience the company so as to discourage such flouting of their legally-mandated corporate responsibility in the future.
> The case was brought by Owen Diaz, who worked as an elevator operator at the plant. He reported he regularly heard racial slurs, including the N-word, on the Fremont factory floor, and saw racist graffiti in bathrooms and a racially insensitive cartoon.
Why misrepresent something when the truth is only a click away?
But besides that, everyone here knows that you know that the value isn't about damages suffered per se, it's about sending a message to racist people like you.
Do you think racism in the work place is ok? How about sexism? Why not homophobia as well? Does smacking the butt of your female coworker really deserve compensation? Where do you draw the line or do you think it should all be ok in the workplace?
Protected classes exist. Libel and slander laws exist. Hate crime law exist. In every single one of those, someone is being "mean" to the other party.
Many of those laws are written in blood, since being "mean" to someone based on traits they're born with and suffering no consequences leads to people being even more "mean".
Frankly, you cannot see past the tip of your nose. Don't comment on how the law is applied.
If nobody sued against discrimination, then discrimination laws would be useless. So fighting discrimination is a public good that we all benefit from. Fighting a lawsuit is hard, especially doing it for almost a whole decade, and against a multi billion dollar corporation.
Should the guy get $10,000 for it? He's not getting paid $3 million, because somebody shouted a slur at him once.
> [Former Tesla VP] Capers Workman, who is Black, has since left Tesla.
Without commenting on the story or the case itself, I have to say that from a purely journalistic perspective, it is very weird to be calling out the race(s) of people related to a story when it’s not central or key to the reporting. The race of Workman seems to bear no relation to the story itself, so why the callout?
> in a story about racism you think the person's race bear no relation to the story itself?
Capers Workman is (was) a VP, not the worker who made the racism claim. Though I think it is still fine to include her race, as it adds context to the statements she made.
By mentioning skin color in that sentence they seem to be implying it is connected to why she left the company. But they don't present any evidence of this, so why mention it?
That was my thought, yeah. It's either the case that I'm simply reading too much into it, or the author was trying to be suggestive as to a link between Workman's departure of the company and what's purported to be an environment of racism within Tesla.
Workman claimed to have left Tesla in a better position than when she'd joined, which while vague, doesn't to me suggest that she left because it was an inherently racist environment.
Valerie Capers Workman is not the former worker. She is the former VP of people at Tesla.
She seems to have been involved in the suit insofar as she claimed she was in the courtroom during the trial, but beyond that, it's not clear to me why her race is worth specifically remarking upon.
I noticed I got downvoted for trying to understand what someone was saying. Your answer helped a bit but I still don't really understand what OP was trying to say. In any case, it says a lot about communication on HN. I'd also like to know what people who downvoted were unhappy about my question.
2. Tesla fired two contractors who were identified as participating in this
3. Tesla suspended one who drew a racist cartoon
4. Tesla did the usual corporate training stuff.
This news article is light on content, so I'm going to have to go read what new facts came about in the actual case and I really don't care enough to do that, so I'm hoping someone here has :)
If it was only that which I thought it was, then I'm not sure what should have been done instead.
The LA Times wrote several in depth pieces investigating Tesla. It wasn't just what you've listed, it was far beyond what is acceptable at any employer anywhere.
Thanks for the link. That was very helpful. I'll provide a short summary of what I read (not full article) since it's a big article. Lots of people are doing the suing:
- People used racist language and wrote that stuff places
- Immediate action was taken but then effectively rescinded (a guy was fired for being racist but brought back in a non-supervisory role)
- 'Soft' retaliation occurred: they were forgiving of people making errors but if you had previously complained, then one mistake would end up with you being fired
- Race-based task discrimination is claimed: Black employees cleaned while White and Hispanic employees took a rest break
At that point I stopped reading, since that was good enough for me to know that it is definitely more than I initially thought.
What's worse, is that with the media coverage about this, a company is going to think twice about hiring that employee. I think lawsuits do more harm for the employee than good. Unless they just win an obscene amount of money to set themselves up for life, otherwise they have a scarlet letter.
Sorry not an expert but I read that it depends on what type of judgement you receive. If it's wages owed, as a sibling comment said, you have to pay taxes. Medical judgement - no. Punitive damages - yes.
