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Wayne A. Cauthen, City Manager for Kansas City |
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St Louis, MO - (10-13-03). A current Lucent Technologies employee has filed a $2 million Lawsuit in the United States District Court Eastern District of Missouri Eastern Division against her employer alleging racial discrimination and retaliation. The lawsuit alleges that for over six months Lucent management witnessed and allowed vicious verbal and intimidating harassment of the worker by her white peers. The lawsuit also alleges that Lucent management requested that the employee remove all allegations of racial discrimination from e-mails to Senior Management stating that "things would get bad for her." Per the lawsuit, when the employee refused to remove racial allegations; she was stripped of certain job responsibilities and her desk was moved behind a wall of files segregating and isolating her away from white peers.
On one occasion, she was approached by a white manager and asked if she was black. When she responded yes, the manager said you can't be black and asked if her mother and father were both black. When the employee responded that both her parents were in fact black, the manager then asked, "well then how do you explain your eye color?" The employee explained that she was wearing color contacts. The manager then asked, "well then how do you explain your hair, it's so straight?" The employee explained that she perms her hair. The manager then asked, "well then why is your hair sometimes long and sometimes short." The employee explained that she was wearing hair weave. At which time the manager tussled her fingers through employees hair and chuckled, "this makes me think of Hans Weimann Hair Replacement." The manager then said that she still didn't believe the employee was black and that she probably didn't know what she was.
On another occasion three managers witnessed a two hour vicious verbal assault of the employee by a white peer during a meeting and did nothing. During the meeting, the white worker refused to call the employee by her name, screamed and yelled constantly and acknowledged that he rejected certain potential Lucent contracts which cost Lucent financial opportunities simply because he refused to work with the employee; although she was capable of doing those jobs. Additionally during the same meeting, he acknowledged that, he purposely withheld engineering procedures, processes and documentation critical for her to perform her job simply because he did not want to be told what to do by her which also costs Lucent financial opportunities.
Other black workers at the same Lucent office have expressed racially motivated hostile working conditions, however, have been afraid to come forward for fear of retaliation.
Lucent Technologies, is a global leader in telecom equipment, it manufactures products used to build communications network infrastructure. Its copper line transmission and switching, wireless, and optical gear is used in core telephony and data networks worldwide. The company also makes communications and network management software and provides a wide range of services. Many of Lucent's products are developed by its Bell Laboratories research and development unit. The company provides wireline and wireless products to leading telephone companies and other communications service providers; former parent AT&T is a major customer.
(distributed through BlackPR.com/BlackNews.com)
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