Four workers have sued Rivian in separate lawsuits this yr over allegations they have been harassed, in some instances by high executives, and that the corporate’s management did little to handle their considerations, in keeping with a TechCrunch evaluate of courtroom data.
Rivian has additionally reached settlements in three different harassment and discrimination instances, TechCrunch has realized.
Lawsuits aren’t unusual within the automotive business, significantly with giant firms that function factories and a number of services. But the allegations contained in these beforehand unreported lawsuits towards Rivian, and those that it has settled, counsel the corporate continues to be finding out its inner tradition – a tradition that was thrust into the highlight three years in the past when it went public.
Two of the lawsuits, filed in California’s Orange County Superior Court, focus on Rivian chief designer Jeff Hammoud, who has been with the corporate since 2017.
One filed by former coloration, materials, and end workforce director Elizabeth Curran in February 2024 accuses Hammoud of being “susceptible to irrational outbursts of anger,” incidents she describes as being “typically directed on the ladies in management.”
The different, filed by sculptor Nathan Facciolla in October 2024, alleges Hammoud created a hostile work surroundings and known as Facciolla’s spouse “a hooker” as a result of she labored an evening shift at a hospital.
Both workers declare they reported Hammoud to HR and that he was not disciplined.
A lawyer for Hammoud declined to remark.
A 3rd lawsuit, filed in federal courtroom final month by line employee Jeremiah Powe, accuses recently-departed chief working officer Frank Klein of assault and battery after he allegedly pulled Powe to the bottom for violating the corporate’s costume code. Powe advised native regulation enforcement that he believed Rivian didn’t correctly examine the alleged incident, in keeping with a police report obtained by TechCrunch.
Lawyers for Powe declined to remark. Klein declined to remark and directed TechCrunch’s inquiries to Rivian.
Rivian was additionally sued by a manufacturing employee at its Normal, Illinois manufacturing unit in February 2024. Nicole Hawkins filed a lawsuit within the Eleventh Judicial Court in McLean County, Illinois claiming she was bodily harassed and threatened by a coworker. When she reported this to Rivian’s human sources division, she claims “[n]othing was executed.” The case is doubtlessly being settled, because the docket now exhibits Hawkins’ lawyer is asking for a dismissal. Her lawyer declined to remark.
Rivian declined to touch upon the claims made by every worker, citing the truth that the lawsuits are ongoing.
“Rivian is dedicated to offering an impressive office freed from harassment, discrimination and retaliation,” Marina Hoffmann, Rivian’s VP of world communications, mentioned in an emailed assertion. “As with any group with 1000’s of workers, conditions do come up that immediate us to take motion. When we turn into conscious of conduct that will violate our company insurance policies or the regulation, we examine completely and take acceptable motion.”
These lawsuits come only a few years after Rivian’s former head of gross sales and advertising Laura Schwab put firm’s tradition underneath scrutiny when she sued the corporate over her personal allegations of sexual discrimination and wrongful termination.
Schwab claimed in her 2021 lawsuit that founder and CEO R.J. Scaringe had “surrounded himself with a decent knit group of males” who created a “poisonous bro tradition” that resulted in “blatant marginalization” of girls. She mentioned she was fired two days after she introduced her expertise to HR.
Schwab’s lawsuit and her weblog put up concerning the firm’s tradition garnered lots of consideration forward of Rivian’s blockbuster Stock Launch in 2021. But she quietly settled with the corporate six months later and dismissed the lawsuit, courtroom data present. Her lawyer declined to touch upon the settlement.
Oscar Ramirez, a lawyer representing each Curran and Facciolla, advised TechCrunch in an interview that these new lawsuits counsel little has modified following Schwab’s case.
“There appears to be a normal sample of high-ranking managers partaking in utterly insane conduct and focusing on workers for any variety of protected actions, or due to their traits,” he mentioned.
“A frothing rage”
Curran, who labored on the firm’s Irvine, California headquarters, alleges that Hammoud confronted her throughout a March 2023 assembly in “a frothing rage, red-faced with anger, veins on his head, and neck bulging as he berated her” after she had bother accessing a pc presentation. She claims the incident introduced her to tears.
The subsequent day, in keeping with the grievance, Curran advised a Rivian HR consultant that she wished to debate the incident. But the HR rep allegedly by no means adopted up with Curran and didn’t provide her the chance to file a proper grievance.
In the weeks that adopted, Hammoud allegedly put Curran on a efficiency enchancment plan primarily based on what Curran’s attorneys say have been “false” causes. During this “reset plan,” Curran claims Hammoud made feedback about how a lot she was or wasn’t smiling. Curran’s attorneys notice within the grievance that Hammoud’s feedback have been “one thing that different Rivian administrators uniformly agreed was not regular.”
In September 2023, Curran was known as into a gathering with Hammoud and an HR rep and was fired for failing to make “adequate enhancements in the course of the ‘reset plan’,” in keeping with the grievance.
This was not the primary time Hammoud had been accused of harassing workers.
Facciolla, who began working at Rivian in 2017, claims in his lawsuit that Hammoud would repeatedly “angrily humiliate” workers. This created a poisonous tradition that led to workers overworking themselves out of concern of Hammoud’s reprisals, in keeping with Facciolla’s grievance.
Just earlier than Christmas in 2022, in keeping with Facciolla’s lawsuit, workers on his workforce have been working 12-to-14 hour days for 3 weeks straight. One day, Hammoud allegedly acquired indignant that one other worker left the workplace to handle their sick little one. The chief designer then allegedly began “aggressively carving up” Facciolla’s clay mannequin of one in every of Rivian’s autos in response, making “main adjustments which can be sometimes made within the early phases” of the automotive improvement course of.
Later that night, when Facciolla advised Hammoud he wanted to go residence as a result of his spouse was working an evening shift on the hospital, Hammoud allegedly requested: “Is she a hooker now?”
Facciolla reported Hammoud to HR and, in keeping with the grievance, the division “appeared superficially sympathetic, however proved bored with correcting the state of affairs.” Facciolla claims HR spoke to Hammoud, however didn’t self-discipline him.
Facciolla started seeing a therapist and ultimately took “a number of weeks off after Christmas to get better” however allegedly skilled extra mistreatment from Hammoud when he returned. Facciolla resigned in June 2023.
Hoffmann declined to touch upon specifics of any of the allegations specified by any of the lawsuits. In a followup e mail, she shared an announcement that Rivian has “specific insurance policies that tackle acceptable conduct within the office and all workers, together with executives, are required to observe these insurance policies.”
Trouble in Illinois
Powe, in the meantime, claims that in November 2022 then-COO Klein “stormed into [his] work space, shouting with rage” and mentioned Powe’s necklace and Rivian-issued jacket violated the corporate’s costume code.
Klein then allegedly grabbed Powe by the jacket and “forcefully pulled him towards the bottom,” earlier than he “proceeded to seize [Powe] by the crotch, and unzipped his pants a number of instances.” Powe claims “a number of” different workers witnessed this.
Powe reported Klein to Rivian’s HR workforce that day, in keeping with the lawsuit, and claims the corporate spent a few month investigating the incident. Meanwhile, Powe filed a police report with the Normal, Illinois police division in December 2022 as a result of he believed “Rivian safety was not going to analyze the incident,” in keeping with the responding officer’s abstract. The Normal Police Department advised TechCrunch the case was closed and no expenses have been filed.
In his lawsuit, Powe claims “[s]everal different workers” at Rivian’s manufacturing unit had made “related complaints towards Klein to Rivian’s HR Department” previous to his alleged assault. Powe saved working at Rivian, however was struck by a car at work in September 2023 and injured. He then claims Rivian “maliciously” required him to clock in on the second ground of the manufacturing unit, and says he was ultimately fired in November 2023, which he says was executed “with out trigger.”
Klein left Rivian in September 2024 to turn into chief working officer of house firm Rocket Lab.
Multiple Rivian settlements
Schwab’s case will not be the one harassment lawsuit Rivian has settled in recent times, courtroom data present. TechCrunch has found at the least two others since 2022.
Battery workforce member Angela Betancourt sued Rivian in federal courtroom in September 2022 after allegedly being “repeatedly subjected to undesirable sexual advances by a number of of her male coworkers” on the firm’s manufacturing unit in Illinois. Betancourt reported the harassment to “a number of HR representatives,” in keeping with the grievance. But, her attorneys wrote, the corporate “failed to handle such illegal harassment and the corporate tradition that permits it.”
In an amended grievance filed in August 2023, which sought class motion standing, Betancourt’s attorneys wrote that it’s “widespread information that girls are routinely sexually harassed at Defendant’s facility with the information of administration, however with out administration making any actual, substantive effort to appropriate it.”
After Rivian unsuccessfully tried to maneuver the case to arbitration, the corporate and Betancourt reached a settlement in August 2024 and the lawsuit was dismissed.
Natasha Hill, an operations and manufacturing affiliate at Rivian’s manufacturing unit, sued the corporate in federal courtroom in October 2023 after one other worker allegedly shared an “specific video” of her with “quite a few coworkers.” She claimed the worker continued to indicate the video to others even after she reported the alleged incident to her supervisors.
Hill claimed in her go well with that one other worker threatened her with a firearm. After reporting all of this to HR, Hill’s lawsuit states that she was terminated in July 2023 “in connection” with the “investigation relating to the firearm incident.”
Hill and Rivian reached a settlement and dismissed the lawsuit in April 2024.
