In California’s largest race bias cases, Latino workers are accused of abusing Black colleagues
In the last decade, the two largest race discrimination cases brought by the federal government in the Golden State alleged widespread abuse of hundreds of Black employees at Inland Empire warehouses.
www.latimes.com
Nearly every day, the onetime Ontario warehouse employee said, he was stunned to hear racist slurs from Latino co-workers.
“They said it in English — they said it in Spanish all the time,” recalled Leon Simmons, a Black father of four with a deep voice and gentle manner. “When they look you right in the eye and call you the N-word to your face, that’s dehumanizing.”
Thirty-two miles away at a Moreno Valley warehouse, it was the same story. Another Black laborer, Benjamin Watkins, described how a Latina co-worker called to him: “‘Hey, monkey! Yeah, you!’ and waved a banana in her hand. A group of women burst out laughing.”
In America’s long history, harassment and discrimination against Black workers has usually involved white perpetrators — and that remains the case today. But with the rapid growth of the Latino population, now at 19% in the U.S. and 39% in California, Latinos form the majority in many low-wage workplaces. And instances of anti-Black bias and colorism among them is drawing new scrutiny, even as activists in the two communities forge alliances over criminal justice and economic development.
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Latinos certainly are targets of job discrimination as well and continue to struggle for equity in the workplace. But the two largest racial bias cases brought by the federal government in California in the last decade alleged widespread abuse of hundreds of Black employees at warehouses in the Inland Empire, the state’s booming distribution hub for trade between the U.S. and Asia.
In interviews, Black employees said a torrent of racist insults and discriminatory treatment was mainly inflicted by Latino co-workers and supervisors who composed roughly three-quarters of the workforces at the sprawling facilities in Ontario and Moreno Valley.
“Mayate,” a type of beetle and Spanish slang for the N-word, was a common taunt, according to interviews and court filings.
Black employees will be compensated as a result of EEOC settlements with Cardinal Health, Ryder Integrated Logistics and Kimco Staffing Services over workplace discrimination.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuits alleged that supervisors at the global medical supplier Cardinal Health and at Ryder Integrated Logistics, a subsidiary of the trucking giant — along with their staffing firms — routinely ignored harassment in Spanish and English at their Inland Empire warehouses. They gave Black employees the hardest manual jobs, denied them training and promotions and failed to take action despite dozens of complaints, according to court filings and interviews.
Many of the Black workers were hired through temp agencies. When they complained, managers — both white and Latino — retaliated by disciplining them or abruptly firing them, according to the EEOC. Others felt forced to quit because of “intolerable working conditions created by the hostile work environment,” the lawsuits alleged.
Cardinal, Ryder and their temp firms denied the accusations. But as scores of Black employees came forward and the EEOC interviewed witnesses, the companies settled the cases last year rather than face jury trials.
“We are seeing an increase in larger race harassment cases,” said Anna Park, regional attorney for the EEOC’s Los Angeles district office. “The nature of them has gotten uglier. There’s a more blatant display of hatred with the N-word, with imagery, with nooses. All the violence you’re seeing in the news, it is manifesting in the employment context.”
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In a state as diverse as California, offenders span all races and ethnicities, she said.
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“Two decades ago discrimination was viewed as a Black-white paradigm,” Park said. “The feeling was minorities can’t be discriminating. But it could be Asians discriminating, it could be Latinos discriminating. Regardless of what color you are, you don’t get a free pass.”
Now about 300 Black workers are gaining compensation, some as much as tens of thousands of dollars, through the Inland Empire settlements. Cardinal agreed to pay $1.45 million. Ryder and Kimco Staffing Services, which supplied workers to Ryder, settled for $1 million each.
The warehouse operators and their staffing firms — including a Glendale temp agency, AppleOne, which supplied workers to Cardinal — must offer extensive harassment training in English and Spanish and submit to stringent monitoring for verbal abuse, bias and retaliation.
The Los Angeles Times contacted more than two dozen current and former Latino workers from Cardinal and Ryder. None agreed to an interview.
