An employee at the Tesla Fremont plant says she was routinely groped, catcalled, and propositioned on the job, even by her superiors, in a new sexual harassment lawsuit.

The Tesla factory in Fremont is where they make the Model S, Model 3, Model X, and Model Y electric vehicles. But according to a new sexual harassment lawsuit against Tesla first reported by the Washington Post, it’s also where they make jokes about female employees’ “Coke bottle figure,” “onion booty,” or “fat ass titties” on the job, or in the words of the lawsuit, “brush up against Ms. Barraza’s back-side (including with their groins) or unnecessarily touch her under the pretext of working together in close quarters.”

That refers to plaintiff Jessica Barrazza, who claims in the lawsuit she filed in an Alameda County California Superior Court that she lodged several complaints with her supervisors and HR after one supervisor sexually propositioned her via text message. The suit claims another supervisor told her, after several colleagues made remarks about her breasts, that “maybe you shouldn’t wear shirts that draw attention to your chest.” According to Barrazza’s filing, she was  “wearing a work shirt provided by Tesla.”

“Nearly every day for three years, my female coworkers and I were objectified, threatened, touched, and propositioned on the factory floor,” Barraza said in a statement to The Verge. “I wanted to come to work, do my job, and support my family without having to endure constant sexual harassment. I felt degraded, humiliated and traumatized.”

Barrazza and her attorneys also make note of the tweet from Elon Musk himself seen above. “That doesn’t set a good example for the factory — it almost gives it like an … ‘he’s tweeting about it, it has to be okay,’ ” Barraza told the Post. “It’s not fair to myself, to my family, to other women who are working there.”

She’s currently on leave from Tesla, and suing for unspecified compensatory damages. According to the Examiner, Barrazza is being represented by San Francisco attorney David Lowe, who won a $22.5 million gender discrimination lawsuit against Pinterest last year.  

Related: Federal Jury Awards $137 Million In Racial Harassment Case Brought By Former Tesla Employee [SFist]


Image: Steve Jurvetson via Wikimedia Commons