DETROIT — General Motors plans to invest more than $1 billion in two Michigan plants for the production of next-generation heavy-duty trucks, the company said Monday.

The investment includes $788 million to prepare its Flint Assembly plant to build the heavy-duty gas and diesel trucks. Another $233 million will be invested in the automaker’s Flint Metal Center to support production of the vehicles. Both plants are located in mid-Michigan.

Despite GM’s commitment to exclusively offer all-electric vehicles by 2035, the company continues to invest in traditional vehicles such as the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra heavy-duty pickups.

The notably profitable trucks are in high demand, and sales are needed to assist in funding the automaker’s investments in EVs.

A GM spokesman said construction related to the investments is scheduled to begin during the fourth quarter. He declined to disclose details and timing of the next-generation pickups.

In 2022, GM reported sales of its heavy-duty pickups increased 38% compared to the prior year, amounting to nearly 288,000 trucks sold.

The investment announcement comes ahead of contract negotiations between the Detroit automakers, including GM, and the United Auto Workers union this summer.

For investors, UAW negotiations are typically a short-term headwind every four years that result in higher costs. But this year’s negotiations are expected to be among the most contentious and important in recent memory, fueled by a years-long organized labor movement across the country, a pro-union president and an industry in transition to all-electric vehicles.

“When business is booming as it has been for the past decade — due to the hard work of UAW members — the company should continue to invest in its workforce,” UAW Vice President Mike Booth, who oversees the union’s GM unit, said in a release.

UAW leaders publicly laid out their top bargaining issues last week, including reinstatement of a cost-of-living adjustment that was eliminated during the Great Recession; stronger job security; and the end of a grow-in, or tiered, pay system that has members earning different wages and benefits.

Customers of Chase’s online banking services were seeing double transactions, fees and/or payments in their accounts, with the situation not immediately being resolved as of late morning on Friday.

Numerous Chase customers were posting on social media that their rent or bill payments were taken out of their accounts twice and reporting hold times with customer service approaching more than an hour. Zelle payments were also being impacted with Chase customers.

“We’re sorry that some customers are seeing duplicate transactions and fees on their checking account,” a Chase spokesperson said. “We’re working to resolve the issue and will automatically reverse any duplicates and adjust any related fees.”

Online banking services, while usually reliable, sometimes spectacularly fail or have temporary outages that tend to spook their customers. Banks typically will resolve an error in their services within hours, and no customer is liable for any errors in their accounts that occur when these happen.

Bed Bath & Beyond is expected to be dissolved after the failed retailer declared bankruptcy, but the company’s crown jewel — Buy Buy Baby — may live to see another day. 

The baby gear retailer is drawing interest from at least two bidders as its parent company Bed Bath & Beyond works to auction off its assets and keep some form of its business alive, CNBC has learned. 

The interested parties include an unknown bidder, who would purchase the banner as a going concern and keep about 75% of stores open, according to correspondence obtained by CNBC. The other interested bidder is Babylist, a direct-to-consumer baby registry website that wants to buy its trademark and domain, that company’s CEO, Natalie Gordon, confirmed to CNBC.

So far, it doesn’t appear as if there’s any interest to buy the Bed Bath banner and keep its stores open, but some bidders are interested in buying its digital assets, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC.

It’s not clear how much the unknown bidder is offering to purchase Buy Buy Baby, but it was seeking an additional $50 million in capital to shore up its proposal, according to the correspondence. That figure offers the first clue into how much bidders are willing to pay to snap up the pieces of Bed Bath’s fallen business.

The valuation of the company and its intellectual property is unclear. In its most recent quarterly securities filing, Bed Bath noted the intangible value of trade names and trademarks was just $13.4 million. 

As of late November, Bed Bath & Beyond had about $4.4 billion in assets and $5.2 billion in debts, court filings show. 

Gordon declined to share the number she offered for Buy Buy’s trademark and domain. 

Who are the bidders?

Ankura Capital Advisors, an investment banking firm, is advising the unnamed bidder and said in a May 16 email to its distribution list that the party is seeking a financial partner “to help lead the purchase of Buybuy Baby out of the BBBY bankruptcy.”

The client was seeking the additional $50 million in capital alongside its current financial sponsor to support a stalking horse bid on the asset, according to the correspondence, which was seen by CNBC. A stalking horse bid is an offer on the assets of a bankrupt company that, if accepted, sets a price floor for future bids.

The mystery bidder, who was not named in the documents seen by CNBC, is an “independent operator with several successful, complimentary retail chains in their portfolio,” according to the message.

“They are open to various structures for the investment, from equity to preferred equity and other forms of junior capital,” the message reads. “They have committed over 400 hours in extensive diligence already and have the team and experience to operate the stores as a going concern.” 

In the email, Ankura notes that Buy Buy Baby had about $90 million in inventory at the time of the bankruptcy filing and had been liquidating about $7.5 million weekly at the time the message was sent. 

Babylist bills itself as a destination for all things baby. It saw $290 million in revenue in 2022, says it’s profitable and counts over a million new parent sign ups each year. The company said it considered putting in a bid to buy the entire chain, including its stores, but it ultimately decided it didn’t fit into its overall strategic plan. 

Babylist started out as a destination for the modern parent who was tired of the same old pink and blue landscapes, but it’s now working to expand its audience to all members of the proverbial village, including grandparents who really want to show up for their grandchildren. 

That’s where Buy Buy Baby — and its long-held name recognition — would come in. 

If Babylist’s bid to acquire the banner’s trademark and domain were to be accepted, people who search for Buy Buy Baby and try to access the website would be redirected to Babylist, CEO Gordon explained. 

“We have tremendous trust with new and expecting parents but Buy Buy Baby is much better known with kind of that older generation,” she said. “So as we’re expanding to the whole family as an audience, we really think it can jumpstart us in that way.” 

Gordon said the company opted out of putting in an offer for Buy Buy Baby’s registry assets because of how quickly they can become stale. 

Plus, the company already appears to be taking share from Buy Buy Baby. Since Bed Bath’s bankruptcy was announced, Babylist has had nearly 200,000 new signups, which is a higher number of new customers than the company usually sees, it said. 

Following the bankruptcy of Babies ‘R’ Us and the potential liquidation of Buy Buy Baby, there are few major retailers families can turn to that cater exclusively to the infant category. For registries, their options include Target, Amazon and Babylist, among others.

Babylist doesn’t operate any traditional brick-and- mortar locations but is opening its first showroom in Beverly Hills, California, this summer.

The crown jewel of Bed Bath & Beyond

This is not the first time Buy Buy Baby has seen sale interest. The banner reportedly drew interest from potential buyers in 2022. It also caught the attention of activist investor Ryan Cohen, co-founder of Chewy and chair of GameStop, who last March pointed to the baby gear banner as one of the most valuable pieces of the company, arguing it could be worth several billion dollars.

At the time, Cohen pushed for a spinoff or sale. 

Buy Buy Baby has remained a bright spot in Bed Bath & Beyond’s otherwise dismal earnings reports in recent years.

In Bed Bath’s fiscal 2021 holiday quarter, same-store sales for Bed Bath & Beyond stores declined 15% — but Buy Buy Baby’s same-store sales grew by low single digits.

And more recently, during Bed Bath’s fiscal third quarter of 2022 that ended Nov. 26, sales declines were reported across the company, but Buy Buy Baby’s revenue declines outperformed Bed Bath’s. During the quarter, comparable sales at the Bed Bath banner declined 34%, while at Buy Buy Baby, they declined in the low-20% range, the company said at the time. 

When Bed Bath & Beyond locations were shuttering across the country as part of the company’s efforts to stop the financial bleeding, it opened more Buy Buy Baby locations in the hopes the stores would boost sales. 

As of late April, 120 of the stores were still open, alongside 360 of Bed Bath’s namesake stores, the company said previously. 

Auction delays

Bed Bath & Beyond’s bankruptcy auction has been delayed twice now, which could indicate the company is still trying to drum up interest for its assets. 

In the months before Bed Bath declared bankruptcy, CNBC reported the company was courting prospective buyers and lenders that would be willing to take on the company and keep its doors open. At the time, the potential buyers included private equity firm Sycamore Partners, which was particularly interested in Buy Buy Baby, and Authentic Brands, which has frequented many bankruptcy-run sales for retailers like Forever 21.

In the end, the process proved unsuccessful and produced “limited interest in a viable proposal to acquire the Debtors’ assets,” according to court records filed in the company’s bankruptcy case in April.

Still, in those filings, the company said it was confident it could offload its names and stores and said it planned to market the business to avoid outright liquidation. 

“While the commencement of a full chain wind-down is necessitated by economic realities, Bed Bath & Beyond has and will continue to market their businesses as a going-concern, including the buybuy Baby business,” the company’s chief financial officer and chief restructuring officer Holly Etlin wrote in a declaration to New Jersey’s bankruptcy court at the time. 

In the filings, the company confirmed CNBC’s prior reporting and said over 100 potential investors had been engaged by Bed Bath’s advisors. Prospective bidders were asked if they were interested in buying the business as a going concern or providing Chapter 11 financing. 

The company had been hoping a buyer would be willing to purchase either Bed Bath & Beyond or Buy Buy Baby as standalone businesses, buy the brands’ intellectual property and perhaps take on a few of their better performing stores.

“Bed Bath & Beyond has pulled off long shot transactions several times in the last six months, so nobody should think Bed Bath & Beyond will not be able to do so again. To the contrary, Bed Bath & Beyond and its professionals will make every effort to salvage all or a portion of operations for the benefit of all stakeholders,” Etlin added in the filings.

Further delays in the auction process could signal willingness on Bed Bath’s part to entertain the offer from the unknown bidder, provided the bidder can find more capital.

Ankura declined to comment on the matter. Bed Bath didn’t return a request for comment. 

Bed Bath previously told CNBC the auction had been delayed so it could have “more time to ensure the most value-maximizing transaction is achieved.” 

Stalking horse bids are now due on June 8 at 5 p.m. and final bids are now due on June 14. An auction, if necessary, is scheduled for June 16. 

CNBC’s Lillian Rizzo contributed to this report.

The PGA Tour and Saudi-backed LIV Golf announced a merger Tuesday in a stunning end to their bitter rivalry on the fairways, in the courts and on the geopolitical stage.

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, who once said playing in LIV events would warrant an apology, said the deal would benefit the sport.

“After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love,” Monahan said in a statement. ‘Going forward, fans can be confident that we will, collectively, deliver on the promise we’ve always made — to promote competition of the best in professional golf and that we are committed to securing and driving the game’s future.’

Monahan told CNBC the move was necessary to grow the sport.

‘There’s been a lot of tension in our sport for the last couple of years. But what we’re talking about today is coming together to unify the game of golf and to do so under one umbrella,’ he said.

‘Together, we’re going to move forward, and we’re going to take efforts to grow and expand this great game and take it to new heights.’

Golf legend Phil Mickelson, who had led prominent players away from the PGA Tour to help form LIV, tweeted his approval of the news Tuesday morning.

And former President Donald Trump, a backer of LIV, took a victory lap Tuesday, declaring he had predicted that the PGA Tour would have to come to an agreement with the Saudi-backed golf operation.

Loved ones of 9/11 victims have protested outside of LIV events, drawing attention to Saudi connections to the 2001 terrorist attacks.

‘PGA Tour leaders should be ashamed of their hypocrisy and greed,’ 9/11 Families United Chair Terry Strada said in a statement Tuesday.

‘Our entire 9/11 community has been betrayed by Commissioner Monahan and the PGA as it appears their concern for our loved ones was merely window-dressing in their quest for money — it was never to honor the great game of golf,’ Strada said. 

While the deal carries some risk for the PGA Tour, George Washington University sports marketing professor Lisa Delpy Neirotti said players, consumers and golf sponsors ultimately have short memories and just want to see the world’s best tee off every weekend.

“Players just want to get paid, and they want to play against their top competitors — and fans want it, too,” she said. “They don’t want to not have the top players playing in the PGA.” 

The agreement will also end all litigation prompted by the PGA Tour’s suspension of players who had ignored its threats and played in LIV events.

Brooks Koepka hits from the fairway during the PGA Championship golf tournament in Pittsford, N.Y., on May 21.Eric Gay / AP

The desire to end lawsuits was most likely a key factor in the unusual union, though University of Buffalo sports law professor Hellen ‘Nellie’ Drew said new lawsuits could come into play from sponsors unhappy with Saudi involvement.

‘Typically these agreements have some kind of good faith morals clause,’ Drew said. ‘You [a sponsor] want the goodwill associated with the PGA Tour. Now that PGA Tour’s goodwill is substantially connected to human rights issues, that’s a whole different animal. That’s not what you’re paying for.’

LIV was formed in 2022 with 48 players led by Mickelson, along with Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka, with a prize fund of $405 million; they and other high-profile players reportedly got deals of at least $100 million to leave the PGA Tour.

Tuesday’s announcement came nearly a year after Monahan blasted players for signing up for LIV events, saying association with the Saudi fund would leave a moral stain.

A dramatic and stern-faced Monahan said last year he knows families who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks and told LIV golfers to take a long look in the mirror before they accepted Saudi government money.

“I would ask any player that has left or any player that would ever consider leaving, ‘Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?’” Monahan said from Toronto on the CBS telecast of the RBC Canadian Open.

The merger didn’t come as a complete surprise to veteran U.S. diplomat Richard N. Haass.

‘I thought it was near-inevitable, as LIV was not going away, given Saudi financial support and strength of several LIV golfers,’ said Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

‘Plus, efforts to isolate the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were fading in the wake of the president’s visit to and subsequent developments,’ he said.

Sports has been an increasingly important tool of the Saudi government’s efforts to ingratiate itself on the world stage and gloss over the kingdom’s human rights record. Critics of the kingdom have called the practice “sportswashing.”

While advancing in age, 38-year-old soccer legend Cristiano Ronaldo could still play in an upper-tier world league. But he opted for playing in the Saudi Pro League this past season.The venerable English Premier League club Newcastle United was bought by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.The kingdom boasts of the world’s richest horse race, the Saudi Cup, with a purse of $20 million.Saudi interests, among other Middle Eastern entities, have become increasing major players in Formula One racing.

“PGA Commissioner Jay Monahan co-opted the 9/11 community last year in the PGA’s unequivocal agreement that the Saudi LIV project was nothing more than sportswashing of Saudi Arabia’s reputation,’ said Strada, whose husband, Tom, an avid golfer, was killed in the North Tower nearly 21 years ago.

‘But now the PGA and Monahan appear to have become just more paid Saudi shills, taking billions of dollars to cleanse the Saudi reputation so that Americans and the world will forget how the Kingdom spent their billions of dollars before 9/11 to fund terrorism, spread their vitriolic hatred, and finance al Qaeda and the murder of our loved ones. Make no mistake — we will never forget.” 

Neirotti, of George Washington University, said she doesn’t expect Saudi money to go away any time soon.

‘I mean, the EPL sold out, they took blood money,’ she said, referring to the English Premier League. ‘And trust me, many American companies are doing work in Saudi Arabia. Deloitte, name every big consulting company, you don’t think they don’t have their hands in Saudi Arabia?’

CORRECTION (June 6, 2023, 7:30 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the organization that merged with LIV Golf. It is the PGA Tour, not the PGA, which is a separate organization.

The PGA Tour announced Tuesday it would merge with LIV Golf, a Saudi-backed men’s golf organization that formed last year to compete with the PGA.

News of the merger sent shock waves through the sports world and even reached the highest echelons of the U.S. government, after a reporter sought comment from the Biden administration about the Saudi government’s taking such a large stake in men’s golf. Biden spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment.

Here’s what it all means.

What is LIV Golf?

LIV was created in 2022 by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) alongside two of the world’s most prominent players, Phil Mickelson and Greg Norman, and others.

Norman was appointed CEO, but it was Mickelson who helped LIV come into existence. Mickelson accused the PGA Tour of not fairly compensating players for things like highlight clips and other media rights, accusing the organization of ‘obnoxious greed.’

Eventually, Mickelson helped persuade 48 players to abandon the PGA Tour for LIV.

The merger has shown that Saudi Arabia and its interests cannot be isolated, veteran U.S. diplomat Richard N. Haass said.

“It’s not as big as the Biden visit or agreement with Iran, and it doesn’t offset their recent failure to raise oil prices,” said Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. ‘But it does send the signal they are a player who cannot be ignored.’

Why did the PGA Tour initially bar players from participating in LIV?

The PGA Tour immediately viewed LIV Golf as a direct competitor — and many in the golf world agreed, often referring to it as a “breakaway league.”

So the Tour decided to force players to pick a side, creating harsh divisions in the golf world.

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan also seemed to disparage the presence of the Saudis in LIV, asking rhetorically in a June 2022 interview, “Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?”

And in response to a lawsuit from players who’d joined LIV and said the PGA Tour had retaliated against them, lawyers for the organization condemned LIV as “a strategy by the Saudi government to use sports in an effort to improve its reputation for human rights abuses and other atrocities.”

So why is the PGA Tour merging with LIV?

The two leagues ended up suing each other — but acrimony and lawsuits ultimately proved bad business for the PGA Tour, which made the calculated decision to endure the blowback of turning 180 degrees in exchange for a unified effort with its former rival.

Lawsuits filed by suspended players and a federal probe into possible antitrust actions by the PGA Tour against LIV may also be moot in the wake of Tuesday’s announcement.

‘We’ve recognized that together we can have a far greater impact on this game than we can working apart,’ Monahan told CNBC, seated next to his LIV counterpart, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund. ‘And I give Yasir great credit for coming to the table, coming to the discussions with an open heart and open mind.’

Despite the vast financial resources at its disposal thanks to its Saudi backing, LIV had failed to secure major TV deals to broadcast its events, which were often instead relegated to livestreams on YouTube.

With its commercial viability in doubt, LIV officials may have decided it was better to cut their losses and approach the PGA Tour with an offering of peace — and money.

How much money is involved? What are the financial incentives on both sides?

Terms of the merger haven’t been disclosed, but LIV Golf players were reportedly being promised eight- and nine-figure earnings to join the league, thanks to the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which is worth about $676 billion.

CNBC’s David Faber, who helped break Tuesday’s news with an exclusive interview with Monahan and Al-Rumayyan, said the PIF plans to invest ‘billions’ into the newly formed entity while it retains a minority stake.

How will major golf events be affected?

They won’t.

The Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open (now known as The Open) and the PGA Championship (which, despite its name, isn’t actually owned by the PGA Tour) are all separate entities from the PGA Tour.

Nor does the Tour control the biennial team-based Ryder Cup tournament — though heading into this year’s event, there were questions about whether U.S. team captain Zach Johnson would forgo selecting LIV members.

Have there been mergers in professional sports before?

All four of North America’s major professional team sports leagues have some kind of merger in their histories, most notably the NFL-AFL union that led to the Super Bowl.

The first World Series in 1903, the 1976 NBA-ABA deal and the NHL’s 1979 takeover of the upstart WHA, though, all pale in comparison to the geopolitical stage where the PGA Tour-LIV drama played out.

What are people in golf saying?

As expected, reaction to the stunning deal ran the gamut — from LIV backers’ spiking the ball to 9/11 survivors’ criticizing the PGA Tour for merging with the Saudi-backed LIV, which they likened to “terrorists,” with others resigned to money’s simply ruling the day.

Former President Donald Trump typed in all caps on Truth Social, boasting that he predicted that the PGA Tour would have to come to terms with LIV.

A key Sept. 11 support group, 9/11 Families United, said it was ‘shocked and deeply offended’ and claimed the merger is ‘bankrolled by billions in sportswashing money from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.’ It added: ‘Saudi operatives played a key role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and now it is bankrolling all of professional golf.’

George Washington University sports marketing professor Lisa Delpy Neirotti verbally shrugged her shoulders and said the deal shouldn’t have been a shock.

‘I ask my students how to spell the word ‘sports?’ It’s m-o-n-e-y,’ she said. ‘Fans have a short memory. They really want to see their stars. They want to see a better product.’

Boeing on Tuesday warned about a new defect on its 787 Dreamliner planes and that it will delay deliveries of the wide-body aircraft, the manufacturer’s latest production issue.

“We are inspecting 787s in our inventory for a nonconforming condition related to a fitting on the horizontal stabilizer,” Boeing said in a statement. “Airplanes found to have a nonconforming condition will be reworked prior to ticket and delivery.”

The issue Boeing detected relates to tiny spacing in the horizontal stabilizer. Boeing said it isn’t related to flight safety and that planes in service can continue operating. Near-term deliveries will be delayed by about two weeks, Boeing said.

The problem is the latest in a spate of manufacturing issues on Boeing planes that have slowed if not paused deliveries of certain aircraft outright, just as airlines are clamoring for new planes to capitalize on the travel boom.

Boeing had paused deliveries of the planes for several weeks earlier this year because of a separate problem on a fuselage component on certain 787s. The latest issue currently doesn’t affect Boeing’s full-year outlook for Dreamliner deliveries, the company said. Boeing has estimated that it would deliver between 70 and 80 of the planes this year.

The company has also had to rework some of its bestselling 737 Max planes this year because of an issues with fittings in some planes’ aft fuselages, made by Spirit Aerosystems.

Boeing shares fell sharply on the news but largely recovered, and were recently down less than 1% in afternoon trading.

Embattled CNN Chief Executive Chris Licht apologized to the news organization’s staff Monday morning during the cable news network’s 9 a.m. ET call, according to people familiar with the matter.

Licht told staffers he didn’t recognize himself in a 15,000-word profile story in The Atlantic that published Friday. The story documented his views on CNN’s coverage and his attempts at winning over staffers during his first year on the job.

Some CNN staffers saw the Licht magazine profile as showing poor judgment at a time when ratings are falling and employees are openly rebelling against his decision last month to air a Donald Trump town hall with hundreds of his cheering fans. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav wasn’t pleased with the profile, titled “Inside the Meltdown at CNN,” and agreed it was mishandled, according to people familiar with his thinking.

Licht said during the call he understands staffers’ frustration and is intent on earning his employees’ trust, said the people. He didn’t specifically speak to why he participated in The Atlantic profile, in which reporter Tim Alberta spent months with Licht, including joining him at the gym during a personal training session and attending backstage CNN programming rehearsals. Licht’s remarks were short, said the people, who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

A CNN spokesperson declined to comment.

Licht announced the hiring of David Leavy on Thursday as the network’s new chief operating officer. Leavy will be tasked with taking over marketing, public relations, advertising sales, facilities and other logistics.

The move will allow Licht to focus more on programming, which is his background. Licht helped launched MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” as its executive producer in 2007 and later became executive producer and showrunner of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on CBS.

Tesla may face a class-action lawsuit after 240 Black factory workers in California described rampant racism and discrimination at the electric automaker’s San Francisco Bay Area plant, including frequent use of racial slurs and references to the manufacturing site as a plantation or slave ship.

The testimonies filed Monday in Alameda County Superior Court comes from contractors and employees who worked on the production floor of the factory in Fremont, roughly 40 miles (65 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco. The vast majority worked at the site between 2016 to the present. Lawyers suing Tesla, Inc. estimate at least 6,000 workers could be part of the class.

The individual testimonies are part of a 2017 lawsuit brought by Marcus Vaughn, who complained in writing to human resources and to Tesla CEO Elon Musk of a hostile work environment in which he was called slurs by co-workers and supervisors. No investigation was conducted and he was fired for “not having a positive attitude,” according to his lawyers.

The lawsuit is just one of several lawsuits alleging racism, harassment and discrimination at the Fremont plant.

Last year, California regulators sued Tesla in state court, alleging the company turned “a blind eye” to abuses and that Musk told workers to be “thick-skinned” about racial harassment. In April, a federal jury awarded another former Tesla employee $3.2 million for racial abuse he suffered.

Bryan Schwartz, one of Vaughn’s lawyers, said the case has dragged on for years as Tesla sought to force the lawsuit into arbitration. Instead, the California Supreme Court in April allowed Black workers to seek a public injunction in court that would require Tesla to change its work environment.

“To have this scope of egregious harassment right here in Silicon Valley, it’s disgusting,” Schwartz said, adding that it’s shocking that “Tesla has allowed this kind of pervasive harassment to go on as long as it has.”

Attorneys for Tesla did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

All of the declarants said they heard use of one particular racial slur, with more than half saying they heard supervisors and managers use that word, according to a declaration summarizing the statements.

Dozens also said higher-ups direct the racial slur toward them, the summary stated, and nearly half said they experienced or saw other Black workers tasked with more physically laborious work and disciplined more frequently.

Production associate Albert Blakes said in his statement that it was difficult to go to work, knowing he would face racist slurs, references to slavery and offensive graffiti for 12 hours at a time. He said he made a verbal complaint to human resources in late 2021, but never heard back and nothing changed.

“Something needs to be done to hold Tesla accountable for the racism that takes place at the Fremont factory to set an example that this racism is not tolerated in workplaces in California,” he said.