Current Events > Michigan trucking company accused of enabling racism and segregation.

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https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2024/02/29/environmental-wood-solutions-trucking-lake-orion-race-discrimination-lawsuit/72632663007/

Darryl Morgan's blood still boils when he recalls the hateful words that came over the CB radio as he sat in his work truck.

[SLURS]

On a regular basis, Morgan says, he and eight of his co-workers put up with such racial slurs while working for Lake Orion-based Environmental Wood Solutions, a trucking and garbage hauling company that does business in Detroit and Brighton. But the name-calling wasn't the worst of it, he says, alleging racism ran the gamut at work, including:

A noose turned up in a bathroom. The letters KKK were scrawled on a door. A note bearing the N-word showed up on a communal microwave.

The Detroit location had segregated bathrooms, workers allege.

According to court records and multiple employees, the company had a whites-only restroom at the Detroit transfer station on Ferry Street that was cleaned by professionals, and a separate, dirty bathroom for minorities to use and clean themselves.

Morgan said dispatchers would tell minority drivers they couldn't use the clean bathroom, though some did so anyway. And when white truckers from Lake Orion came to town, he said, they would joke about the dirty restroom, saying, "That bathroom's for the monkeys."

"When I started here, I was warned: 'This place is racist as hell' but I didn't know it was going to be this bad," said Morgan, one of nine men who is suing EWS, alleging the company condoned racist behavior for years and retaliated against victims when they spoke up. The lawsuit also names EWS owner Joseph Corrigan as a defendant, alleging he condoned racist behavior and workplace practices that gave whites preferential treatment over minority employees.

According to the lawsuit, the retaliation included cutting workers' hours or blackballing them when they tried to find new jobs in the trucking and garbage hauling industry after quitting or being let go.

And while they were at EWS, the plaintiffs allege, they were subjected to discrimination ranging from being paid less than white workers and forced to drive lower-quality trucks, to being drug tested as a condition of employment while their white counterparts were allowed to drink booze and smoke pot at work, with no drug-testing required. Federal regulations require periodic drug testing for commercial driver's license holders.

One plaintiff says he was warned to stay out of Brighton after it got dark, alleging white truckers told him Brighton was a "sundown town" a term referring to municipalities that historically excluded Black people and other minorities from remaining in town after sundown.

What's unusual about this case, however, is that a jury will never hear the workers' claims.

That's because they were required to sign arbitration agreements when they got hired, which means they cannot sue the company over workplace disputes in a court of law. Rather, a private arbitrator will hear the complaints, and decide whether wrongdoing occurred.

In going this route, companies can be spared from having bad workplace behavior exposed in open court.

Despite this arrangement, however, the plaintiffs are speaking out.

"Ive been a truck driver since 2006 ... I have never experienced and seen and heard the horrendous and horrific things (that occurred) in that place of business. It's horrible," said Morgan, who filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in September 2022 and months later was granted a right-to-sue letter.

He initially filed a lawsuit in Wayne County Circuit Court in May 2023, hoping to take his case to a jury, though the case was eventually transferred to federal court, where U.S. District Judge Matthew Leitman on Jan. 10 ordered the matter into arbitration.

Morgan is the lead plaintiff in the case, and the most vocal.

There's one incident that especially gets him riled up. It was a meeting where he called out a harasser on his actions and management was there, responding. A big fight almost broke out. A white trucker pointed at a Black trucker and allegedly said: 'You people are lazy." That's when it turned, he said.

"There were all Blacks on one side of the room, all whites on the other side," Morgan recalled. "They didnt talk to us much. We were like outsiders ... that meeting almost turned into a brawl."

More in the link.

Yes, it's 2024.

BumP

This is why if they're going to gaslight us that "corporations are people," then those corporations should be be treated like people, as in a death penalty should be on the table. And while our laws are such that a human being can't be put to death for having or promoting racist views, it makes perfect sense for a company to be sentenced to death for that... it would quickly make all these others fall in line.

If there's one thing these assholes value just as much or more than their bigotry, it's their pocketbooks.

When a chud haughtily compares January 6th to BLM again, remind them that it was over 400 years of garbage like this that led to BLM, and a fat orange crybaby led to the other.

A noose, in this context, should be treated as a death threat.

Perhaps racists would be more scared to show their face if such actions ended in permanent consequences.

Bum ass Brighton Michigan.

Segregated bathrooms in 2024