A new lawsuit purports General Motors allowed racist and hateful acts to continue at the GM Toledo transmission plant in Ohio and did not act after it was brought to the automaker’s attention.
The Toledo Blade reported on the lawsuit last Friday, which was filed by nine African-American employees and former employees. The acts allegedly took place in March 2017, but the plaintiffs attest nothing was done about the situation until June. The lawsuit was first filed this past April was but amended this past September after investigations from the Ohio Civil Rights Commission.
The lawsuit has been assigned a federal judge and plaintiffs requested a jury trial.
The OCRS documented no fewer than three incidents where nooses were found in the GM Toledo plant between March and June 2017. The lawsuit says numerous other incidents occurred that led to a workplace environment that fostered violence and racial hate. Two of the plaintiffs eventually resigned from their work this year over the environment.
Now the nine plaintiffs have sued for damages, punitive damages, costs, interest, and attorney fees. In addition, they listed 10 steps the plant needs to take to ensure violent propaganda does not proliferate, which include the installment of an Equal Employment Officer at the plant.
GM said it’s taking the lawsuit very seriously and the alleged actions do not represent the company’s culture it intends to foster across every sector of its business.
“Discrimination and harassment are not acceptable and in stark contrast to how we expect people to show up at work. We treat any reported incident with sensitivity and urgency, and are committed to providing an environment that is safe, open and inclusive. General Motors is taking this matter seriously and addressing it through the appropriate court process,” a statement from the automaker read.
Comments
Oh, look, under Miss Mary Barra’s “leadership” we have closed auto plants putting 15,000 workers out of jobs and now racism. Add that declining sales and profit at GM under her watch and wannabe macho bravado against our president that failed miserably.
Mary Barra is a failure. Period.
99% chance this is another fake hate crime / incident. Less than 1% of these cases are valid. Yet the media treat each one as authentic. Lol ?: BTW when did we pass laws in this country establishing a protected class of citizens. Every time I have a job in the hood I get harassed, called racist names and been robbed now 3 separate times. Where’s my “equal Employment Officer” ?
You are equal employment officer has an office on Martin Luther King Blvd.
AGREED. I am more than happy to let the case play out, but it does reek of a opportunistic law suite or possible hoax. These last 10 years have been lousy with phony hate crimes, so much so that there are numerous web sites that actually track the news and court cases involving them. As you said almost all are false.
Time will tell with this one…
Looks like they should also include the ignorant people like you who have posted comments in the investigation. I smell bigotry and racism. Can’t believe this is happening in 2019.
Your instincts are correct, in all likelyhood it ISN’T happening in 2019.
How did you get these statistics? “99% chance this is another fake hate crime / incident. Less than 1% of these cases is valid.” Unless you can provide evidence, maybe you shouldn’t be pulling numbers out of thin air and acting like they mean anything or are truthful in any way. The FACT is, you have no clue the percentage of these cases that are valid. You made it up. And you made it up so that our society doesnt have to address this very REAL problem. By making up false statistics, you’ve decided that you are immune from having to care about racism and having to fix racism. It’s a weak cop out and shows that you would rather turn your head and blame victims than man up and do the right thing.
I suspect that a big part of the problem is the Union. The Union talks a lot about not condoning racism in the workplace, but then they protect racist employees and prevent any meaningful punishment. Management has been cowed by its overly powerful union. All they can do is talk and hold sensitivity trainings. What they need to do is locate the perpetrators and get rid of them. You can’t tell me that no one knows who is doing all of this, given the number of incidents.
I worked at a non-Union manufacturing site in the South, and the company would never have stood for this disgraceful situation.
What world do you live in where the union is so all powerful that they have employers cowering in fear? Certainly not the one where thousands of union employees have just been laid off by GM.