More than 200 current and former workers at Turner Industries Group of Baton Rouge, an industrial services company, have filed a discrimination lawsuit saying that workers there hurled racial slurs and jokes and displayed drawings of nooses, swastikas and Aryan Brotherhood symbols.
The company has flatly denied any harassment or discrimination and in fact stands for diversity and inclusion.
The statements from each side leave no middle ground in observing the case. Either the black workers are lying or the white company owners are.
It's hard to believe that hundreds of workers could all be under the same delusion of seeing nooses, racist graffiti and segregated bathrooms at their workplace.
Yvonne Turner, who worked at the company, said a protective suit was stuffed, tagged with her name and hung from a noose. She said when she told a supervisor about it, he laughed.
Another worker, Cheryl Falola, said employees were separated by race at another Turner facility and that she was harassed repeatedly by a white man who worked with her.
Turner officials said many of the plaintiffs no longer work for the company and that some others never did. The Turner CEO Roland Toups said his company records show few of the plaintiffs ever complained to their supervisors about the harassment.
Without benefit of EEOC records filed in the case, it's tough to decide which side is telling the truth.
But the one factor that makes me lean towards the workers' side is that an April 2010 EEOC investigation found that black workers were in fact subjected to racist behavior at a Turner plant in Paris, Texas. The EEOC found that Turner managers knew about the hostile work environment but did nothing to fix it.
Is it possible that plaintiff lawyers, smelling the chance for a quick buck after last year's EEOC ruling, engineered a campaign to further smear the company with new bias complaints?
Anything is possible, I guess. I mean, didn't we all believe Tawana Brawley when she first made her accusations?
But what seems far more likely to me is that Turner Industries was home to an environment poisoned by racism and did nothing to address it.
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20-Jan-11 - In an interview with CNS News on Thursday, senator Rick Santorum voiced his absolute disbelief that Obama would dare support a woman's right to choose abortion ... considering he's a black man.
So the sista was harassed? Why didn't she make a scene like she does with the brothers? She just went all church mouse and took it? Dummies are easy to torment.
When it comes my way, I send the tormenters scurrying.
THIS IS JUST A "SCAM" TO EXTORT MONEY FROM A COMPANY! Since I know this company well, I can tell you the claims that management did nothing are false. When notified, Turner acts quickly. Shame that our race is again just seeking to "hold up" a company for personal gain when the truth is they deserve nothing, period.
Managers who do not document such complaints when made to them and then “USE THIS” lack of “recorded” complaints within their company’s files and/or records as evidence of themselves being in good standings, are just plain hypocritical.
And just because "ONE" person may have "Fetched" enough coffee and donuts over the years that they've been (silently) promoted to the company's beloved "Fetch’ologist” and therefore given a special "pass" among co-workers, (until a sick-day is taken), doesn’t mean that what all the "NON- Fetch’ologists " are experiencing is collective hallucinations.
GMANN I am a WHITE woman who has worked for this company for just a little over a year. You want to call all these people liars and I don't understand why. They aren't after money, they are after respect. I just resently lost my job just because my forman said he wanted me gone. No other reason. When this forman made forman, 3 days later got 3 days off for making racist comments. I was there. I heard what he said. It was reported but NOTHING was done about it. You tell me why.
let me say this to Gmann i have been working at turner for six years now in south Louisiana I'm not going to tell you you don't know what you are talking about but nine times out ten you are one of those blacks at work who washes there supervisors truck on your day off are cut there grass to try to keep a job we have a lot of you down here and guess what when they finish sucking up they kick them out with the rest of us let me ask you this how do you explain a black man can work for turner for 20 plus years on his tools but never become a foreman or a supervisor and white kids come out of high school maybe a year are two at the most be a helper on one job and the foreman on the next the 20 plus man teach him a little for 3 weeks and on the next job the kid is his boss i see all this everyday at work and not just turner but i been calling and reporting this and alot more but our lawyers told us not talk about it to the press just because its ok for you when you worked for them when you did but i want to know this the folks on this case can care less about getting money from turner they didn't work for but when they tell you there's no work and you watching them send nothing but whites to work over and over what was we suppose to do go wash there trucks for a job
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Comments: (6)
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By: Michael on 2/03/2011 8:13PM
So the sista was harassed? Why didn't she make a scene like she does with the brothers? She just went all church mouse and took it? Dummies are easy to torment.
When it comes my way, I send the tormenters scurrying.
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By: GMANN on 2/04/2011 9:56AM
THIS IS JUST A "SCAM" TO EXTORT MONEY FROM A COMPANY! Since I know this company well, I can tell you the claims that management did nothing are false. When notified, Turner acts quickly. Shame that our race is again just seeking to "hold up" a company for personal gain when the truth is they deserve nothing, period.
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By: Watcher Watchmen on 2/05/2011 8:29AM
Managers who do not document such complaints when made to them and then “USE THIS” lack of “recorded” complaints within their company’s files and/or records as evidence of themselves being in good standings, are just plain hypocritical.
And just because "ONE" person may have "Fetched" enough coffee and donuts over the years that they've been (silently) promoted to the company's beloved "Fetch’ologist” and therefore given a special "pass" among co-workers, (until a sick-day is taken), doesn’t mean that what all the "NON- Fetch’ologists " are experiencing is collective hallucinations.
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By: Hopper on 4/05/2011 3:14PM
GMANN I am a WHITE woman who has worked for this company for just a little over a year. You want to call all these people liars and I don't understand why. They aren't after money, they are after respect. I just resently lost my job just because my forman said he wanted me gone. No other reason. When this forman made forman, 3 days later got 3 days off for making racist comments. I was there. I heard what he said. It was reported but NOTHING was done about it. You tell me why.
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By: chris on 2/08/2011 4:18AM
let me say this to Gmann i have been working at turner for six years now in south Louisiana I'm not going to tell you you don't know what you are talking about but nine times out ten you are one of those blacks at work who washes there supervisors truck on your day off are cut there grass to try to keep a job we have a lot of you down here and guess what when they finish sucking up they kick them out with the rest of us let me ask you this how do you explain a black man can work for turner for 20 plus years on his tools but never become a foreman or a supervisor and white kids come out of high school maybe a year are two at the most be a helper on one job and the foreman on the next the 20 plus man teach him a little for 3 weeks and on the next job the kid is his boss i see all this everyday at work and not just turner but i been calling and reporting this and alot more but our lawyers told us not talk about it to the press just because its ok for you when you worked for them when you did but i want to know this the folks on this case can care less about getting money from turner they didn't work for but when they tell you there's no work and you watching them send nothing but whites to work over and over what was we suppose to do go wash there trucks for a job
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By: Mary E. Lyons Felton, AAS, BS, M.Ed, EdS on 9/25/2011 10:16AM
My story is true and can be substantiated with documentary evidence.
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