Black Former Tesla Worker: Nickname for the Plant Was ‘The Slave Ship’

By Gabriel Thompson - Capital and Main, February 15, 2022

In the spring of 2017, when Fatima Islam learned she had been hired to work at Tesla’s production plant in Fremont, Calif., she had high hopes. Then a single mother of two young children, the 33-year-old was willing to face the four-hour round-trip commute from her home in Merced, and didn’t flinch when she learned she was expected to work 12-hour shifts, six days a week, inspecting Model 3’s that rolled down the line.

“I had heard so many great things about Tesla,” she said. “I thought that I would be able to grow at the company and turn it into my career, maybe be there my whole life.”

On the plant floor, Islam quickly started having second thoughts. As an African American woman, she noticed a striking lack of women or African Americans in supervisory roles. Soon after getting hired, she became pregnant, and during one grueling shift she fainted. Later, she said, one of the mechanical technicians referred to her as “the Black pregnant bitch.” Islam said that the same employee repeatedly harassed her 18-year-old co-worker, another African American woman, demanding that she sleep with him. When Islam reported the incidents, bringing along multiple witnesses, she said nothing was done. “He let it be known that he’s cool with HR,” she said of the technician. Soon after, she said, the 18-year-old was fired.

Equally shocking to Islam was the overt racism. She heard the n-word constantly on the plant floor, while Latino workers also called her a mayate, roughly the Spanish language equivalent. Supervisors, she said, did nothing in response; in fact, floor leads sometimes joined in. Racist graffiti, including the n-word and swastikas, were carved into workbenches and scrawled on bathroom stalls.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. “They make it seem like this great place,” said Islam, of the high-end electric vehicle company that positions itself as a force for social good. “But the nickname for the Tesla plant was ‘the slave ship,’” she said. “You see how comfortable they are with things like that?”

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