Black Tesla employee says co-workers tormented him with war ringtones

By Kiet Do

Click here for updates on this story

    FREMONT, California (KPIX) — A former Tesla employee has filed a racial discrimination and wrongful termination lawsuit against Tesla, alleging employees mocked his PTSD and the company subjected him to harassment and retaliation for reporting safety violations.

Marc Cage, who is African American, was hired as a quality assurance and control project manager for the automaker from November 2018 to December 2020.

Cage is a former defense contractor who worked in an active combat zone in Afghanistan and he was severely injured in two separate explosions.

According to the 62-page lawsuit filed in Alameda County Superior Court, Cage’s PTSD was triggered by a co-worker’s ringtone which was similar to alarms that warn of rocket or mortar attacks in Afghanistan.

“He went to the employee discreetly and, calmly and politely, asked a co-worker if he can please change his ringtone and explained why. Instead of doing the civil and appropriate thing, that co-worker not only increased the volume on his phone to make it more obnoxious but told other co-workers about it so that they could change their ringtones to — in order to essentially harass Mr. Cage,” said Justin Berger, Cage’s attorney and partner at Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy.

Cage complained to management but, according to the suit, “the Construction Superintendent sarcastically told Mr. Cage to ‘get over it’ and that it was good for him to hear the disturbing ringtone because he needed to ‘face his fears.’”

Cage was called “boy” and also saw “swastikas and prominent displays of the n-word” at the Fremont plant, similar to those described in an earlier lawsuit by the Department of Fair Employment and Housing.

The lawsuit describes one instance involving an expense report for groceries where a supervisor invoked a racist trope by writing in the comments “This is $160 for a bbq?”

“He’s got to deal with people making crude jokes about race, mocking his PTSD that he suffered as a result of his time in Afghanistan and so he can’t do his job,” Berger said.

The court document also includes e-mails and photos documenting a wide range of construction and code violations that Cage witnessed at Tesla Gigafactory near Reno and at the vehicle factory in Fremont.

In one instance, Cage informed his superiors of a welding repair of a high pressure line that did not follow proper procedures.

“That can become a ticking time bomb. You can have this weld on a pressure tank and, five years from now, 10 years from now, you’ve got 100 workers around in a factory. That weld gives out and a tank explodes and you have massive injury and fatalities. Which is why what Mr Cage was trying to do was so important,” Berger said.

Cage alleges his safety concerns were ignored and that management retaliated against him by transferring him to another department, stripping him of responsibilities, and, ultimately, terminating him.

San Jose State professor Shaun Fletcher, an expert on race and diversity, said the alleged attacks on Cage’s PTSD are troubling.

“If someone is so inclined to do racist things and be racist, there is no line that they’re unwilling to cross,” Fletcher said.

Cage’s lawsuit comes after an employee sued over racial discrimination at Tesla Lathrop plant in February, an employee sued over sexual harassment in November 2021. In October, a former employee was awarded $137 million after suffering continuous racial abuse.

“So at a certain point, we have to look within ourselves and say ‘If I continue to spend my money with the brand that continues to run afoul of my personal convictions, what message am I sending?’ So at a certain point, of course, our internal compass has to supersede our consumerism of a brand like Tesla,” Fletcher said.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.