Mississippi Workers' Center for Human Rights and Legal Aid Society of San Francisco/Employment...

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PASCAGOULA, Miss.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 26, 2001

Class Action Suit Filed Against Mississippi's Largest Private

Employer -- Alleging Hostile Work Environment and Discrimination

According to Bill McNeill, Legal Aid

Society managing attorney and one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, an amended lawsuit that involves hangman's nooses in work areas, mock lynchings conducted by white workers and supervisors, hate-oriented graffiti left for all to see on bathroom walls, and black workers passed over for promotions time and time again was filed today by 11 black workers, on behalf of a potential class of thousands, against Ingalls Shipbuilding, a company that annually receives millions in federal contracts. Plaintiffs are also suing Ingalls' parent companies, Litton Industries and Northrup Grumman.

The class action suit alleges a widespread failure to promote black workers, pervasive disparate treatment of black workers, systematic steering of black workers to the filthiest, most unappealing and dangerous jobs, and an endorsement of a racially hostile atmosphere for black workers. Plaintiffs are suing under Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Thirteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and are seeking injunctive relief and compensatory and punitive damages.

According to the plaintiffs, the most pervasive example of the racially hostile environment in which Ingalls employees work is the racist writing which has, until recently, blanketed the restroom walls. The graffiti includes widespread references to the Ku Klux Klan and to "niggers," and drawings of black people with nooses around their necks and tongues hanging out of their mouths. Images are complimented with phrases such as, "the only good nigger is a dead nigger."

According to McNeill, a recent investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office into the racially hostile environment at Ingalls caused the Company to paint over the offending walls. The graffiti has returned with a vengeance, however, and Ingalls has done little, if anything, to address the issue.

Equally horrifying are instances where black workers are subjected to hangman's nooses left in their work areas and mock lynchings on job sites conducted by white workers and supervisors. Recently, according to McNeill, a black female employee at Ingalls, Earlean Bell, filed suit against the company alleging a white supervisor had placed a noose around her neck and pulled on it. According to her deposition testimony, the event was particularly terrifying to Ms. Bell because two of her relatives had been lynched in the 1930s. In September 2000 on the eve of trial, the Bell case settled for an undisclosed sum of money. A number of other black workers at Ingalls have also been subjected to similar affronts. Many of these nooses have been collected by the plaintiffs, and will be offered as evidence at trial.

"Ingalls represents one of the most racially hostile work environments that has come to light in recent history," said McNeill. "The situation here harkens back to the days that precipitated the enactment of the Civil Rights Act."

"The conditions black employees have had to endure at Ingalls are classic violations of both United States and International Human Rights statutes and laws," said Sandra Jaribu Hill, another of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs and executive director of the Mississippi Workers Center for Human Rights. "The presence of nooses, written messages of hate and racial harassment are signs and symbols of modern day forms of slavery and racial hatred," she continued, "Such practices continue without intervention from management."

According to McNeill, another issue black workers at Ingalls deal with on a daily basis is the "glass ceiling." Black workers are almost never promoted to management positions at Ingalls, despite the fact that they are often asked to train white workers for those jobs, says McNeill. Instead, says McNeill, they languish in dead-end jobs while lesser-qualified white employees are promoted. Frank A. Bridges, Jr., a named plaintiff in the case, says he has trained generations of white employees during his 29 years with Ingalls, watching them skip over him on the corporate ladder. In the time since his last promotion in 1991, Bridges says he has trained at least five white workers to take positions above his own. "I guess they think I'm good enough to train the leaders, but not good enough to lead," said Bridges.

Ingalls Shipbuilding Company, located in Pascagoula, Miss., is the largest private employer in the state, employing more than 11,000 people, of which just under half are black. In addition to numerous Federal contracts, the USS Cole is currently at Ingalls for repairs.

The action was filed in the Federal Court for the Southern District of Mississippi. Representing the plaintiffs are Sandra Jaribu Hill of the Mississippi Workers Center for Human Rights, Bill McNeill and Jory Steele of the Legal Aid Society of San Francisco, Employment Law Center, and attorneys from the Center for Constitutional Rights.