The Feds are Suing Exxon Mobil for “Racial Discrimination”
Jose Nino
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On March 2, 2023, the federal government filed a lawsuit against Exxon Mobil over allegations that the company did not properly address racial discrimination in the workplace after five nooses were discovered at a Louisiana plant.
“When employers become aware of racially offensive or threatening conduct in the workplace, they have a legal obligation to take prompt, remedial action aimed at stopping it,” Rudy Sustaita, a regional attorney for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Houston District Office, declared in a press release which announced the legal action the Feds were pursuing against Exxon Mobil.
Per the lawsuit, the energy company violated federal law by not taking adequate action following a series of incidents that took place between 2016 and 2020 at a facility in Baton Rouge. These incidents consisted of hangman’s nooses being discovered at the facility. For example, in an incident that took place in January 2020, a black employee at the facility found a noose at his workplace and went to management to complain about this incident.
The lawsuit alleged that the company was aware of three similar incidents at the facility over the last few years. The most recent case took place in December 2020.
The EEOC asserted that the company investigated some but not all the incidents and “failed to take measures reasonably calculated to end the harassment.”
“A noose is a long-standing symbol of violence associated with the lynching of African Americans. Such symbols are inherently threatening and significantly alter the workplace environment for Black Americans,” Elizabeth Owen, a senior trial attorney in the EEOC’s field office in New Orleans, declared in the release.
The lawsuit claims that Exxon Mobil was in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits racial discrimination in the workplace, due to its lack of action to address this matter.
“Even isolated displays of racially threatening symbols are unacceptable in American workplaces,” Michael Kirkland, director of the EEOC’s New Orleans field office, declared in a statement.
Per a report by CBS News on March 3, the company took on the lawsuit, proclaiming it has “zero tolerance policy of any form of harassment or discrimination in the workplace.”
“We encourage employees to report claims like this, and we thoroughly investigated,” the company said to CBS. “The symbols of hate are unacceptable, offensive and in violation of our corporate policies.”
From the looks of it, this looks like another hate hoax scandal. In the Civil Rights Revolution era, anti-discrimination laws were used to shake down productive private actors and allow for parasitic actors to gain further political clout.
Should a proper right-wing government get into power, it must do everything possible to dismantle the Civil Rights bureaucracy and restore the freedom of association in the US.
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