“Jon, your first 15 nominees this year were so awful. How are we supposed to decide which is the worst, and please stop adding nominees. You’re only making our job harder.”
Well, dear readers, sorry. Sometimes, I pick the nominees, and sometimes they leap off the screen begging to be nominated.
From the EEOC:
Porous Materials, Inc., an Ithaca, N.Y.-based operator and manufacturer of testing equipment for porous materials, subjected its employees to an ugly mix of sexism, racism, and xenophobia and violated federal law prohibiting harassment and retaliation, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charged in a lawsuit filed today.
The EEOC charges that a plant manager used racial slurs, called foreign-born employees “terrorists,” and told the only black employee that her husband should work in a cotton field with a rope around his neck. He then told her to drink Kool-Aid to calm down and fired her for complaining about his racist statements. He also complained that he was “sick” of immigrants stealing American jobs and not speaking English, forbade employees from speaking other languages, and urged immigrant employees to leave America.
The EEOC’s suit also charges that the plant manager was similarly abusive toward women: he loudly called women “bitches,” complained about their “PMS’ing,” and said that women could not perform a “man’s job.” He told a woman she would have to “come over here and sexually harass me” to be sent home early; made other unwanted sexual advances; said a woman was too “fat and disgusting” to have sex with her husband; and commented on female employees’ “buns” and “curves.” The company owner, rather than putting a stop to this, behaved similarly; he called female employees “dumb women,” complained that “these women can’t do anything,” and told a woman she would not be getting a raise because of her sex.
Says EEOC trial attorney Daniel Seltzer, “Businesses may think that permitting sex-, race- and national
origin-based harassment in the workplace is acceptable. It isn’t, and those who do so will be held accountable.”
It will also get you nominated for 2018’s “Worst Employer.”
Thanks to Eric Meyer for the nomination. Do you have a “Worst Employer” worthy workplace? Let me know in the comments below.
