Racism charges at GM, from insults to nooses, spurs warnings and firings

After three lawsuits alleging rampant racism at a General Motors plant in Toledo, Ohio, and firings in response, African-American workers say the offensive behavior continues.

The latest incident was last week, when a toy monkey was displayed to taunt black co-workers, lawyers for current and former employees at the plant said. It comes after years of racist language on the assembly line, scrawled slogans and swastikas on the restroom walls and nooses suspended in the workplace, as well as misogyny, according to the lawsuits. In addition to the impact on the workers, it’s a reality check for a company whose CEO, Mary Barra, stands as an icon of gender diversity in the C-suite.

The lawsuits, which were brought last year, seek unspecified damages and action to end the behavior. One says GM figures in a “legacy of reprehensible crimes against African-Americans.”

“GM downplays this and says it is a few isolated incidents, but it’s not,” said Michelle Vocht, a Michigan lawyer representing eight employees at the plant who are suing GM, alleging a hostile workplace. “They didn’t take it seriously enough, and it’s still happening.”

The company does take the complaints seriously, spokesman David Caldwell said. GM has taken disciplinary action and also fired some employees, Caldwell said, declining to say how many -- measures that haven’t previously been reported. Meetings and training sessions were held. For one of the sessions, GM took the unusual step of stopping the line.

Among the alleged acts, detailed by CNN.com in a Jan. 17 report, were Whites Only signs on restroom doors and nooses hung from the ceiling in the plant. Some workers referred to black employees as “monkeys” or called them “Dan,” for “dumb-a-- n-----,” according to one of the lawsuits. Some wore T-shirts with swastikas under their coveralls, one of the suits claims.

In legal documents, GM acknowledges the nooses, hostile remarks and offensive slogans but denies some of the incidents and the claims that they were widespread. It says the alleged conduct was contrary to its “good faith efforts to comply with applicable law.”

“I’m outraged that any of our employees would be subjected to harassment,” Gerald Johnson, the company’s vice president of North American manufacturing, said in an email. “GM’s stand is clear: We have zero tolerance for racist or discriminatory behavior.” Johnson said the company would “drive it out of the workplace.”

The GM transmission plant, first opened in 1916, employs about 1,700 people, and covers some 2 million square feet over 151 acres on Toledo's north side near the Michigan border. The plant produces GM’s six- and eight-speed rear-wheel-drive and six-speed front-wheel-drive transmissions.

Caldwell, the company spokesman, said GM and the police are investigating to determine who is responsible for the racist acts and that the company has a handwriting expert working on the matter.

GM said the first official complaint came in 2017 and that the company responded vigorously. In April, a year before the first of the lawsuits, the automaker sent a notice to all employees saying offensive “jokes, cartoons, pictures, language” wouldn’t be tolerated. As part of an action plan GM developed that year, the company interviewed employees who used lanyards as part of their trade and who worked in the area where nooses were turning up.

By then, one suit alleges, it was too late.

“Hate-driven employees felt free to hang nooses, display racist graffiti and verbally attack and racially insult African-Americans,” the suit claims.

Ray Wood, past president of UAW Local 14, the union chapter that represents the workers at the plant, and Tammy VanRiper, past vice president, are the other two workers who have filed lawsuits against GM, alleging harassment and a hostile workplace.

Wood, 65, was the first African-American president of the local, elected in 2006. He claims in his complaint that by the spring of 2017, when he was running for re-election, it had gotten around the plant that he had been named president of the Toledo unit of the NAACP, a post he won in 2014. He says nooses and racist signs were posted and he was subjected to repeated racial epithets and threats.

Wood reported the first noose in March 2017, he said in an interview. He said GM didn’t do anything for weeks and that when it did, it was just a statement in a weekly letter to employees that most throw away without reading.

“There was always an undercurrent of racism at the plant,” Wood said. “The last several years it really took off.”

He lost his re-election bid and retired in 2017.

‘VanStripper’

VanRiper, the local’s first female vice president, claims in her suit that she was subjected to sexual harassment. A member of the union local’s Civil Rights Committee, VanRiper, who is white, assisted with investigations and helped minority employees file complaints and grievances involving racial discrimination at the plant.

When she ran for re-election in 2014 and, unsuccessfully, again in 2017, workers defaced her campaign signs, calling her a “n----- lover,” “Ray’s ho,” and “VanStripper,” according to her complaint.

The lawsuit claims that VanRiper applied for a job at the plant as a health and safety trainer. When she didn’t get it, the manager admitted that if he hadn’t given the position to a white male, “he would have gotten his ‘a-- chewed,’ ” the suit claims.

VanRiper lost her bid for re-election.

Caldwell declined to comment on VanRiper’s lawsuit. In its legal response, GM denied all allegations in the suit.

In a 10-month investigation concluded last March, the Ohio Civil Rights Commission found probable cause to determine discrimination, spokeswoman Mary Turocy said in an interview. The commission’s report said GM’s response was inadequate and that some GM managers showed indifference to the claims.

Caldwell said officials at the plant reported the behavior and “condemned it in zero-tolerance fashion.”

The next step in the commission’s process would have been a hearing. The workers decided to sue instead.