Black workers allege bias at company
The EEOC has sued a Houston construction company,
alleging it treated black employees differently
by denying them access to power tools and not
giving them time for lunch.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission contends
in a lawsuit filed in federal court last week
that Standard Constructors fired all seven black
railroad construction and maintenance workers
on the same day last year and replaced them with
nonblack employees.
"I'm disappointed that the EEOC saw fit
to file a lawsuit on these charges," said
David Feldman, an employment lawyer with Feldman
& Rogers who is representing Standard Constructors.
"We see the fact situation in a very different
way. To me, it's very, very illogical to think
a company would hire individuals of a particular
race and national origin and terminate them because
of their race and national origin," he said.
"Obviously something else has to be at work."
Before going to Standard Constructors, the all-black
crew worked for another company that had a contract
for maintenance work at a chemical plant, according
to the EEOC.
Standard Constructors eventually got the contract
and, with it, the workers.
The workers were never called by their names,
but instead a manager referred to them as "boy"
or "black boy," Aimee McFerren, the
EEOC attorney in charge of the case, said.
Feldman said he was surprised to read those allegations
in the lawsuit because he could find no evidence
of those kinds of racial remarks in the interviews
he has conducted.
The all-black crew had to use hand tools, while
a crew of Hispanics routinely had power tools,
according to the EEOC. And at lunch, no one picked
up the black workers from the work site so that
they could eat, McFerren said.
Safety and health regulations forbid eating at
the work site, she said.
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