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Ohio GM factory employees file racism lawsuit against company

TOLEDO, Ohio — More than a half-dozen black employees at an Ohio General Motors plant say they are facing racist threats and intimidation at work.

Evidence is laid out in a lawsuit that includes pictures of nooses, "whites only" signs and the N-word, which they say showed up inside the plant. GM says it takes discrimination and intimidation seriously and is doing all it can to get rid of the problem. A state law enforcement agency says it isn't doing enough.

Every day he walked into work, Marcus Boyd said, he prayed he'd survive his shift unscathed. "I felt like I was at war, risking my life every day," said Boyd.

Derrick Brooks, a former Marine, worked in the same place. Both were supervisors on different shifts at GM's transmission plant in Toledo. Brooks considers himself tough because of his military training, but he struggled to handle what was happening at work.

"How rough and tough can you be when you got 11 to 12 people who want to put a noose around your neck and hang you till you're dead?" said Brooks.

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There is a reason he brings up nooses. It is not just a figure of speech. He has pictures of a noose that he thinks was left as a message to him. "This is the picture of the noose that I found the night that I was at work on my shift," said Brooks. "This was saying, 'You don't belong here.' This was saying, 'If you stay here, this is what could possibly happen to you.'"

When the noose appeared in March 2017, Brooks said he reported it to upper management. He was sure he was the intended target, but said he was told to investigate by questioning his employees. "It felt like a slap in the face. It did, but I had to be professional," said Brooks.

According to a lawsuit now pending against GM, this was one of at least five nooses discovered at the factory in separate incidents.

The suit also claims there were signs that blacks were not welcome there. The words "whites only" were scrawled on a wall and there were swastikas on bathroom stalls and the words "(racial slur) not allowed" scratched or written on bathroom walls.

In the struggling town of Toledo, Brooks and Boyd did not want to leave their six-figure jobs. Brooks has eight children and Boyd takes care of his mother, who is an amputee. Now, they and seven others have sued GM for allowing an "underlying atmosphere of violent racial hate and bullying," according to the lawsuit.

"When an employee who was under me, he told me that, back in the day, a person like me would have been buried with a shovel -- that was a death threat. And I was told to push that to the side," said Boyd. Instead, Boyd said, he reported the incident. "He admitted to it and I was pulled to the side and (upper management) said, 'You know, if you want to build relationships here, just let things go. He'll be alright.'" But, Boyd said, the threats got worse, so he left.

Brooks and other black employees also noticed they were being called Dan. "I thought they just, you know, mispronounced my name for Derrick. Then, later, I find out that DAN was an acronym for dumbass (racial slur)," said Brooks.

General Motors sent CNN a statement insisting that discrimination and harassment are not acceptable and are in stark contrast to how they expect people to show up at work. The statement says, "We treat any reported incident with sensitivity and urgency, and are committed to providing an environment that is safe, open and inclusive."

But according to more than a half-dozen current and former black employees, the problem is the culture. They say, inside the Toledo plant, racism and harassment are the norm, not the exception.

One employee filled a police report. Others filed complaints with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission prior to filing suit.

"The ultimate decision that was made is that GM did allow a racially hostile environment," said Darlene Sweeney-Newbern, of the Ohio Civil Rights Commission. "GM did not do very much at all or what they did do is not effective."

GM says that it held mandatory meetings and even closed the plant for a day for training and to address the issue with every shift.

The Civil Rights Commission report noted a former union president's testimony that, during one of those meetings, a white supervisor said "too big of a deal" was being made of the nooses because "there was never a black person who was lynched that didn't deserve it."

The lawsuit alleges that supervisor was never disciplined. Brooks and Boyd say therein lies the problem: GM is a lot of talk and not enough action. "General Motors is supposed to stand for something, right? That's the great American company. What are you doing about this?" said Boyd.

GM says it has not identified who is responsible for hanging the nooses and no one has been fired in those incidents. But, GM says, it has dismissed some people at the Toledo plant during its extensive anti-discrimination and anti-harassment work that is continuing across its plants.

 

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