Forced arbitration isn't just either, but the court system hasn't left much room for alternative with such overreaching punishments.
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.
$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.
No. This incentivizes companies to take complains seriously. Tesla isn't being punished because an employee did something. Employees always do things. Tesla is being punished for allowing the behavior to continue for an extended period of time. They don't need to install cameras to detect/prevent every occurrence. They need to institute a functional system that detects and handles repeat offenders. That might be as simple as a means for complaints to be lodged, investigated and acted upon. And when they find people acting like this, yes they do need to actually fire them.
Punishments that are disproportionate to the offense are never a good policy. Ask any people who were on the receiving end of those throughout history. Just because it's a company being punished, does not change anything fundamentally. It's still an insane punishment for a single offense.
It's telling that almost nobody would choose non-hostile working conditions over being paid off more than they will earn in a lifetime even as a senior employee. When litigation is so significantly more desirable than the supposedly desirable outcome of non-hostile work environment, you have a much bigger problem than what you'd started with.
This is a civil matter, not criminal. The punishment is proportional to both the crime and the size of the defendant. A bug company will always require a greater level of punishment in order to induce change.
Don't make a hostile work environment or fuck around and find out?
Theres literally a pending class action against Tesla for this. They have a systemic problem that they're going to have to address or keep getting fined. 137 million is pennies for the company anyway.
Some might find this hard to believe but it's really easy not to be racist. It really really is.
If every claim of hostile workplace involved a high up person yelling at black people to go back to Africa maybe a whole bunch of companies deserve to get hit with fines that actually encourage them to stop enabling that stuff, or go bankrupt and be replaced by companies that don’t tolerate their leadership doing that stuff.
Also most business are not racist nor hostile to the extent Tesla is described by the victims, otherwise they would indeed be shut down.
Your cameras and microphones argument makes no sense. Racist graffitis in the restroom does not require big brother level of surveillance for the company to start an internal investigation.
Also mandatory arbitration agreements is obviously used to avoid both dealing with toxic behavior inside the company and public backlash.
