Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Profitable Racism

We read:

"The nation's largest defense contractor has settled a racial harassment lawsuit in Hawaii for $2.5 million, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced Wednesday. ....

Daniels was an avionics electrician at Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station and claimed he was subjected to "persistent verbal abuse," including racial taunts and references to lynching, slavery and the Ku Klux Klan by his fellow crew workers and immediate supervisor while working at job sites in Hawaii, Florida and Washington state, the EEOC said.

After complaining about the harassment to supervisors, the trouble escalated and Daniels said he received multiple death threats, despite Lockheed Martin's policy against racial discrimination.

Lockheed Martin said: "The EEOC's characterization of the facts is false and we regret that the EEOC, for whatever reason, has chosen to distort the factual record in this matter. We chose to settle the allegations from six and seven years ago to enable all parties to move on.

"The conduct in question involved a small number of first-line employees in a small, single operating unit of the company. When management became aware of the allegations, it conducted investigations and took the appropriate remedial actions based on the facts presented at that time.

Source

The company obviously thinks that the black guy was exaggerating but you must not directly question the word of a racism accuser, of course. What he says is gospel. The normal rules of evidence do not apply. So the shakedown succeeds. When a government agency sues you, it is almost always cheaper to settle rather than bear the huge legal costs of a battle through the courts. And with damages awards on that scale, there are going to be a lot more allegations of forbidden language.