A former Tesla safety director claims he was fired after he raised concerns about unreported workplace injuries
- A former Tesla safety director alleges that he was fired for raising concerns about workplace safety conditions and misreported workplace injuries, Jalopnik first reported.
- He alleges that after bringing these concerns to the company's attention, he was threatened and eventually fired over false accusations of bullying.
- A Tesla representative told Business Insider that Ramirez was fired for harassing employees and using inappropriate language.
A former Tesla safety director alleges that he was fired for raising concerns about workplace safety conditions and misreported workplace injuries, Jalopnik first reported.
The former employee, Carlos Ramirez, filed a lawsuit against the company on Wednesday. In the lawsuit, he alleges that he became aware of chemical fires, improperly placed parts and equipment, failures to comply with permits, employees that didn't receive proper medical treatment for workplace injuries, and misreported workplace injuries.
Ramirez alleges that after bringing these concerns to the company's attention, he was threatened and eventually fired over false accusations of bullying.
According to the lawsuit, Ramirez was hired as a director of environmental, health, safety, and sustainability in February 2017 and fired in June 2017. According to his LinkedIn page, Ramirez had previously worked for SolarCity, which was acquired by Tesla in November 2016.
A Tesla representative told Business Insider that Ramirez was fired for harassing employees and using inappropriate language.
"Mr. Ramirez was terminated because after an extensive investigation, it was clear that he had engaged over and over again in harassing workplace behavior and used extremely inappropriate language that violated any reasonable standard. We conducted our investigation after we received an onslaught of complaints about Mr. Ramirez's behavior, with nearly a dozen different employees stating that he engaged in clear bullying, sought to intimidate his colleagues, and repeatedly made inappropriate comments about women," the representative said.
In April, the Center for Investigative Reporting published an investigative report saying Tesla had misreported workplace injuries and failed to take some safety measures at its factory in Fremont, California.
The report says Tesla failed to report injuries employees incurred while at work or mislabeled them, avoided some safety markings for aesthetic reasons, and insufficiently trained some employees for dangerous work. It added that the California occupational-safety agency had logged over 40 violations from Tesla since 2013.
In a blog post, Tesla denied the allegations in the report, calling it "a completely false picture of Tesla and what it is actually like to work here" and "an ideologically motivated attack by an extremist organization working directly with union supporters to create a calculated disinformation campaign against Tesla."
Two days after the investigative report was published, California's Division of Occupational Safety and Health confirmed it was investigating workplace conditions for Tesla employees.