General Mills (GIS) , which manufactures popular food brands such as Cheerios, Nature Valley and Häagen-Dazs, is facing a disturbing lawsuit from its current and former employees. The company is being accused of having a “fraternal organization of male white supremacists” running its manufacturing facility in Covington, Ga., that created a “racially hostile work environment” for its Black employees.
The lawsuit, which was filed on June 2 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, claims that General Mills violated the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and other federal and state laws for allowing Black employees to be “systematically deprived” of facing equal opportunity in the workplace at the facility for over 30 years.
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The suit alleges that HR and management at the facility formed a group called the “Good Ole Boys,” which were made up of white employees who were not required to “comply with policies, procedures, job descriptions, or advancement standards to the same extent or degree as that required of Black employees.”
Black employees were allegedly given false performance evaluations to justify harmful employment actions while false information was used to give white employees promotions and bonuses. Racist white employees were also allegedly empowered to “harass and mistreat” Black employees, and “openly used the N-word and other racial slurs” to intimidate them.
In one instance, a Confederal Mural that was 12 feet tall and more than 20 feet wide was allegedly displayed outside of a production area where Black employees were required to walk pass by daily, and remained there between 2005 and 2021.
In another example, Black employees were also allegedly required to wear racist T-shirts “at certain times and events.”
“Good Ole Boys member James Spitzer created several t-shirts depicting a boulder or rock with ‘Covington’ written below it and, in at least one iteration, a General Mills flag on it,” reads the lawsuit. “Upon information and belief, several of these t-shirts contain symbols intended to convey white supremacist ideas.”
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In a more recent incident, the lawsuit also claims that a Black employee found a “racist hand gesture image” in a production area of the facility, and after the employee brought it to the attention of a supervisor, there was allegedly “no specific action to address the symbol.”
“Egregious incidents of racism have gone ignored by local and corporate HR for over 20 years,” reads the lawsuit. “Further, HR routinely informs racist white supervisors about the content of complaints against them along with the identity of the Black employees who made the complaint. This frequently results in retaliation against Black employees. As a result, many Black employees will not make complaints of discrimination to HR or fill out “climate surveys” for fear of retaliation by the Good Ole Boys.”
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Workplace discrimination is still a serious issue in the U.S., despite many companies vowing in 2020 to be more inclusive toward people of color following nationwide Black Lives Matter protests.
According to a 2023 poll by job recruiting website Monster, 91% of employees said they have experienced discrimination in the workplace, and 77% said they have witnessed an act of discrimination at work.
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