A federal court jury in Jonesboro has ruled in favor of six black employees of Nucor-Yamato Steel Co. in a race discrimination case that included evidence of lynching re-enactments and portrayals of black employees as monkeys.
On Thursday, 11 white and one black juror unanimously found the Charlotte, N.C., company liable for supervisor racial hostility and co-worker racial hostility at its Blytheville steel plant based, in part, on the acts of Dan DiMicco, who is now the CEO of Nucor. DiMicco was the general manager of the Blytheville plant at the time that many of the racial offenses occurred.
The six plaintiffs were each granted $100,000 in compensatory damages and $100,000 in punitive damages, for a total of $1.2 million. Wiggins Childs Quinn & Pantazis, a Birmingham, Ala., law firm, represented the plaintiffs.
Nucor, in a press release, said it had "prevailed" in the lawsuit because many of the original claims against the company were dismissed over the seven-year course of the case - including claims of discriminatory retaliation - and because the final verdict "was not a tenth of what [the plaintiffs] had asked for."
"This case has always been about proving to others what the hard-working men and women of Nucor-Yamato have always known," Vice President and General Manager Doug Jellison said in the release. "We have absolutely no tolerance or patience for discrimination."
Jellison noted that Nucor had received an Employer of the Year Award from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 2005, after the original complaint was filed.
"Given what the six Arkansas plaintiffs had to endure since their suit was filed in 2003 - not to mention the indignities they suffered which led to the case in the first place - any one of them will tell you this victory is about a lot more than money," said Robert L. Wiggins Jr., the plaintiffs' lead attorney.
"In the bigger picture, it's about getting Nucor to treat its black employees with the same decency and respect as they give other employees," Wiggins said.
Racial acts presented as evidence included lynching re-enactments, racial slurs broadcasted over the plant's radio system, portrayals of black employees as monkeys and a variety of other racial insults directed at African-American employees. Nucor also sold, in its company store, items bearing Confederate flags and the Nucor logo.
According to the plaintiffs' attorneys, the jury heard that "white employees burned a cross in the roll mill department and covered their heads with hoods," a supervisor hung "a chicken with a hangman's noose... in another black employee's workstation", and "repeated racial slurs, nooses and similar items hung in the roll mill department, and racially offensive graffiti on bathroom walls."
[ Link to this article ]
