Former SpaceX supervisor alleges harassment, retaliation, and safety violations in lawsuit
A former SpaceX safety supervisor, who was aware of high secret data on U.S. authorities applications, is suing the corporate and one in all its senior staff for alleged discrimination, sexual harassment, and retaliation.
Jenna Shumway, who was promoted to Senior Contractor Program Safety Officer after being employed in 2022, additionally alleges the senior worker — Daniel Collins, a former Protection Division official employed to run safety compliance for the corporate’s authorities work — violated high secret protocols after which hid this data from the federal government.
Legal professionals for Shumway, Collins, and SpaceX didn’t instantly reply to TechCrunch’s request for remark.
Collins made the information in December 2024 when The New York Instances reported SpaceX was underneath federal assessment for sloppy safety protocols. Collins discouraged reporting safety clearance violations and allowed executives with out correct clearances into labeled conferences, in response to the NYT. This and different allegations triggered no less than three federal evaluations of the corporate’s safety procedures, the NYT discovered.
Based on Shumway’s criticism, she was handed over for the director place that Collins in the end was employed to with out being given the chance to use for it. Her “work surroundings totally modified” when Collins was employed as her superior in spring 2024, in response to the criticism. Shumway claims Collins successfully waged a marketing campaign of harassment towards her, which included stripping her of her tasks over a interval of months and in the end resulting in her termination in October 2024.
Collins’ harassment prolonged to different feminine staff too, the criticism alleges. The discrimination included stopping feminine workers from doing required safety work, allegedly setting them up for non-compliance, watching one worker’s chest throughout a gathering, and asking a subordinate feminine worker if she needed to “get shitty collectively” over after-work drinks.
Shumway and different feminine staff repeatedly reported Collins to SpaceX Human Sources, the lawsuit states. The corporate ignored these complaints, the swimsuit alleges, and didn’t take any motion past suggesting the staff keep away from being alone with Collins. Shumway is in search of unspecified damages.
This isn’t the primary time SpaceX has been sued over claims that it allows sexual discrimination. Earlier lawsuits have alleged comparable tales of bias towards feminine staff and a hostile work surroundings that enabled gender-based harassment. The corporate can also be battling investigations from the California Civil Rights Division and the Nationwide Labor Relations Board over comparable claims.
The lawsuit was filed in late Might within the Los Angeles County Superior Courtroom; it was later moved to federal court docket on June 30 at SpaceX’s request. It’s filed within the federal Central District of California court docket underneath case quantity 2:22-cv-05959.