Tesla ditched language saying it was 'a majority-minority workforce' after Elon Musk said 'DEI must die'

• Tesla removed language around its minority workers and employee groups in a recent legal filing.
• The carmaker ditched the references shortly after Elon Musk spoke out against DEI.
• In past filings, the company had promoted its efforts to curate a diverse workforce.

Tesla ditched a reference to its "majority-minority workforce"
in its latest regulatory filing.

The EV maker removed the following line in its annual 10-K filing, which was published on Friday: "With a majority-minority workforce, empowering our employee resource groups to take charge in driving initiatives that attract, develop and retain our passionate workforce is vital to our continued success."

Bloomberg was the first to report on the omission. Tesla's recent filing excludes any mention of promoting diversity in the company's hiring practices.

In 2022, the filing said the company aimed to "attract a pool of diverse and exceptional candidates." It continued: "We also believe that our ability to retain our workforce is dependent on our ability to foster an environment that is sustainably safe, respectful, fair and inclusive of everyone and promotes diversity, equity and inclusion inside and outside of our business."

The 2022 filing also cited outreach to Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic Serving Institutions to sponsoring employee resource groups across numerous locations, including Asian Pacific Islanders at Tesla, Black at Tesla, Intersectionality, Latinos at Tesla, LGBTQ at Tesla, Veterans at Tesla, and Women in Tesla.

It added: "We engage these networks as key business resources and sources of actionable feedback. We are also working on diversity efforts in our supply chain to expand our outreach and support to small- and large-scale suppliers from underrepresented communities to emphasize this culture with our own employees."

While the latest filing makes no references to efforts to hire a diverse workforce, the carmaker noted that its HR policies do not tolerate harassment or discrimination, including over race and sexual orientation.

Tesla's decision to omit any references to minority workers and employee resource groups comes only a few weeks after its CEO took to social media to criticize DEI.

Earlier this month, Elon Musk said on X that DEI was "just another word for racism" as he sparred with billionaire Mark Cuban over such initiatives.

"DEI must DIE," Musk wrote on X last month. "The point was to end discrimination, not replace it with different discrimination."

A spokesperson for Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

While Tesla has appeared to promote DEI in the past, it's also been battling accusations of racism and sexism. Last year, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Tesla over allegations of racism at the carmaker's Fremont factory.

In 2022, a California civil rights regulator sued Tesla claiming that it had received "hundreds of complaints from Black workers regarding racial discrimination and harassment at the Fremont factory.

At the time, Tesla called the California lawsuit an attack against "the last remaining automobile manufacturer in California" and said it disciplined employees who engaged in harassment or discrimination.

In 2022, the carmaker also highlighted Tesla's DEI team, along with a report from 2020 that showed underrepresented communities made up about 60% of the company's workforce. Since then Tesla has yet to publish any more recent stats regarding demographics at the company.

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