[eesmith]

What lousy lawyers Tesla must have. There were TWO jury trials, and the plaintiff was successful in BOTH of them.

There are also many companies with illegally discriminatory workplace environments in existence.

Just because "pedo guy" Musk claims something doesn't mean it's beyond criticism.

There's always more than what's reported in the news. It's not like we're going to read the court transcripts.

Please be specific about what's wrong with this law, otherwise it seems like you are blowing smoke to minimize Tesla's blame.

I'll quote from the first opinion at https://casetext.com/case/diaz-v-tesla-inc-4 as a starting point:

> 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?

[misslibby]

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.

[shadowgovt]

> 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.

[misslibby]

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.

[shadowgovt]

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.

[misslibby]

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.

[eesmith]

Freedom only for the owners of companies?

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.

[shadowgovt]

> 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.