Four employees filed separate lawsuits this year alleging that top executives harassed Rivian, and that the company's leadership did little to address their concerns, according to a TechCrunch review of court records.
Rivian has also reached settlements in three other harassment and discrimination cases, TechCrunch has learned.
Lawsuits are not uncommon in the automotive industry, especially with large companies that operate multiple factories and plants. But the allegations contained in previously unreported lawsuits against Rivian and the lawsuits it filed show the company is still torn apart by its internal culture — a culture that was highlighted three years ago when it became public.
One of the two lawsuits filed in California's Orange County Superior Court centers on Rivian chief designer Jeff Hammoud, who has been with the company since 2017.
Color in February 2024; Reported by Elizabeth Curran, Director of Materials and Finishes. Accused. Hammoud describes incidents of “irrational outbursts” that are “often directed at women in leadership.”
Another submitted by sculptor Nathan Facciolla in October 2024. Accused. Hammoud created a hostile work environment and called Facciolla's wife a “funeral” because she worked the night shift at the hospital.
Both employees reported Hammoud to HR and said there was no discipline.
A lawyer for Hammoud declined to comment.
Jeremiah Powe, laborer; Accused. Chief Operating Officer Frank Klein recently resigned after Powe was dragged to the ground for violating the company's dress code. According to a police report obtained by TechCrunch, Powe told local law enforcement that he believed Rivian did not properly investigate the alleged incident.
Attorneys for Powe declined to comment. Klein declined to comment and directed TechCrunch's questions to Rivian.
Rivian In February 2024, its Normal, A production worker at the Illinois plant was also charged. Nicole Hawkins sued. Lawsuit Illinois In the Eleventh Judicial Court in McLean County, she claims she was physically harassed and threatened by a co-worker. When she reported this to Rivian's human resources department, she was told “(n)something was done.” Hawkins' attorney is seeking a dismissal, so the case is likely to be settled. Her lawyer declined to comment.
Rivian declined to comment on individual employee claims, citing the ongoing litigation.
“Rivian is harassment; We are committed to providing an excellent workplace that is free of discrimination and retaliation,” Marina Hoffmann, Rivian's vice president of global communications, said in an emailed statement. “With any organization with thousands of employees, situations arise that prompt us to take action. When we become aware of conduct that may violate our corporate policies or the law; We will investigate thoroughly and take appropriate action.”
The lawsuits came when Laura Schwab, Rivian's former head of sales and marketing, sued the company over allegations of sex discrimination and wrongful termination.
Schwab Her 2021 lawsuit. Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe surrounds himself with “tight-knit men” who have created a “toxic frat culture” that results in blatant exclusion of women. She said she was fired two days after bringing her experience to HR.
Schwab's lawsuit and her Blog post Ahead of Rivian's block IPO in 2021, there has been much attention about the company's culture. But she quietly settled with the company six months later and dismissed the lawsuit, court records show. Her attorney declined to comment on the settlement.
Oscar Ramirez, an attorney representing both Curran and Facciolla, told TechCrunch in an interview that these new lawsuits change little after Schwab's case.
“There seems to be a general pattern of senior managers targeting employees for completely insane behavior and protected actions or because of their character,” he said.
“Anger overflows”
Irvine of the company. Curran, who works at the headquarters in California, said at the March 2023 meeting that Hammoud was “irritated, red in the face, and allegedly had varicose veins in his head and swollen neck.” He had trouble accessing a computer presentation. She said the incident brought her to tears.
The next day, according to the complaint, Curran told a Rivian HR representative that he wanted to discuss the incident. But the HR representative never followed up with Curran and gave her no chance to file a formal complaint.
In the weeks that followed, Hammoud alleged that Curran's attorneys had entered into Curran's performance improvement program based on “false” pretexts. During this “reset plan”, Curran made comments to Hammoud about how much she was smiling or not smiling. Hammoud's comments were “unusual, something other Rivian directors have uniformly agreed to,” Curran's lawyers noted.
In September 2023, Curran held a meeting with Hammoud and an HR representative and was fired for failing to make adequate progress during a “reset plan,” the complaint states.
This is not the first time Hammoud has been accused of harassing workers.
Facciolla, who started working at Rivian in 2017, alleges that Hammoud “outragedly humiliated” employees. According to Facciolla's complaint, Hammoud's fear of retaliation created a toxic culture in which employees overworked themselves.
Just before Christmas 2022, according to Facciolla's lawsuit. His team of employees worked 12- to 14-hour days for three straight weeks. One day, Hammoud was angry that another employee had left the office to take care of their sick child. The chief designer then began a clay prototype of Rivian's car in response to Facciolla's clay model, allegedly making “major changes in the early stages” of the car's development process.
Later that evening, When Facciolla told Hammoud that he needed to go home because he was working the night shift at the hospital, Hammoud asked, “Is she a hunter now?”
Facciolla reported Hammoud to HR, and the department, according to the complaint, “appeared sympathetic on the surface, but demonstrated no interest in rectifying the situation.” Facciolla said HR spoke to Hammoud but did not discipline him.
Facciolla began seeing a therapist and eventually took “weeks after Christmas to recover,” but when he returned, he said he experienced more abuse from Hammoud. Facciolla steps down in June 2023.
Hoffmann declined to comment specifically on the allegations outlined in any of the lawsuits. In a follow-up email, It stated that Rivian “has clear policies that address appropriate behavior in the workplace, and all employees, including executives, are required to adhere to these policies.”
Problem in Illinois
Meanwhile, Powe said in November 2022 that COO Klein “shouted and stormed into the work area” and that Powe's necklace and Rivian-issued jacket violated the company's dress code.
Klein then allegedly grabbed Powe by his jacket, “forced him to the ground,” and “grabbed (Powe) by the throat and unzipped his pants several times,” the lawsuit alleges. Powe said several “other employees” witnessed this.
Powe reported Klein to Rivian's HR team that day, and the company spent about a month investigating the incident, according to the suit. Meanwhile, Normal in December 2022, as Powe believes “Rivian security will not investigate the incident”. A police report was filed with the Illinois Police Department. The regular police department told TechCrunch that the case was closed and no charges were filed.
In his lawsuit, Powe alleges that all other employees at Rivian's facility made similar complaints against Klein to Rivian's HR department. Powe continued to work at Rivian, but in September 2023, he was injured in a car accident on the job. Rivian then asked him to watch the clock on the second floor of the factory, where he said he was fired in November 2023 without cause, saying that Rivian was “jealously” forced to do so.
Klein left Rivian in September 2024 to become chief operating officer of the space company Rocket Lab.
Several Rivian settlements
Schwab's case is not the only harassment lawsuit settled by Rivian in recent years, court records show. TechCrunch discovered at least two others from 2022.
Battery team member Angela Betancourt sued. Rivian was accused in federal court in September 2022 after several of her male co-workers accused her of “routinely making unwanted sexual advances” at the company's facility in Illinois. According to the complaint, Betancourt allegedly harassed “multiple HR representatives.” But her lawyers wrote that the company “failed to address such unlawful harassment and company culture.”
In an amendment Complaint Betancourt's attorneys, who sought class action status, filed in August 2023 that it was “common knowledge that women were regularly sexually harassed with the knowledge of the defendant's management, but without management making any proper and reasonable efforts to do so.”
After Rivian tried unsuccessfully to move the case to arbitration, the company and Betancourt reached a settlement in August 2024 that dismissed the suit.
Natasha Hill, Rivian's plant operations and manufacturing associate; sued. In a federal court filing in October 2023 after another employee alleged she shared the “clear video” with “several co-workers,” she said the company continued to show the video to others even after the employee reported the alleged incident to supervisors.
Hill said another employee in his suit threatened him with a gun. After reporting all this to HR. Hill's lawsuit states that she was terminated in July 2023 in connection with an “investigation related to a firearm incident.”
Hill and Rivian reached a settlement and dismissed the lawsuit in April 2024.