Uber has recently found itself in troubled waters. The company faced public outrage after an ex-employee came out and recounted her tenure at the company, claiming that she faced harassment there and that her complaints were all met with inaction. The company is still dealing with the fallout from that and recently removed its SVP of engineering. Meanwhile, a female engineer at Tesla has now claimed that the company (where she still works) has been harassing her.
AJ Vandermeyden says that Tesla is discriminating against her on the basis of gender by paying her a lower salary than men doing the same work and by promoting less qualified men over her. Speaking with the Guardian, Vandermeyden said:
Until somebody stands up, nothing is going to change. I’m an advocate of Tesla. I really do believe they are doing great things. That said, I can’t turn a blind eye if there’s something fundamentally wrong going on.
The fundamentally wrong things mentioned here concerned her position as manufacturing engineer in the general assembly department. The department is dominated by men and Vandermeyden claimed that she was being paid less than the male engineers from whom she took over her duties.
Commenting on the distribution of women at her workplace, she said that all of the company’s chief executives are men and out of 20 Vice Presidents, merely two are women. She also went on to say that despite pointing out inadequacies in the quality testing procedures at Tesla that were missed by her male peers, her claims were ignored and other male engineers received the promotion she wanted.
She has sued the company despite working there as well and her complaint also mentions:
unwelcome and pervasive harassment by men on the factory floor including but not limited to inappropriate language, whistling, and catcalls.
Apparently, she finally had to transfer out of general assembly and into the purchasing department. She also claimed that she was denied basic amenities like overtime pay, rest breaks and meal periods when news of her being a whistle-blower spread.
Meanwhile, Tesla has trashed the claims as being unsubstantial, The company said that it had hired a third party to look into the matter after the claims first surfaced and that particular body was unable to find enough claims to substantiate claims of gender discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. Meanwhile, Vandermeyden continues to work at Tesla even while fighting it in the courts.
