← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Gabrielle
Thread ID: 17493 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2005-03-24
2005-03-24 13:25 | User Profile
"By STEPHEN FRYE Of The Daily Oakland Press
When a workplace dispute spilled over to his home and his family, Kevin Collins said he knew something had to be done. Advertisement
But nothing was done, he said, and that's why he's suing his former employer, the Road Commission for Oakland County, alleging that a dispute over pro-black attire led to a pattern of harassment, threats and even possible attempts to injure him.
Collins, 47, is now 10 weeks away from a jury trial in his civil cases against the road commission, scheduled for May 31 before Oakland Circuit Judge Mark Goldsmith.
On May 17, a final settlement conference will be held.
The suit, filed in Oakland County Circuit Court, alleges Collins endured harassment from co-workers after he complained about a prevalence of pro-black clothing worn by co-workers.
But Collins said the lack of response by the road commission is what forced him to quit the job from which he had hoped to retire.
One co-worker, though, said that no such harassment occurred.
According to Collins, the first reaction came a day after making the complaint about the clothing, first to a union steward and then to a superintendent.
Collins said he found crackers in his work boots the next morning, which he interpreted as a gesture derogatory to being white.
Over the next months, he said he found notes with cryptic threats, overheard concerns expressed about him, and eventually felt threatened with two incidents of damaged safety equipment and a threat found at his house.
Collins, who worked as a laborer for the road commission, said the breaking point came on Aug. 12, 2002, when he found a bag of crackers inside his newspaper box outside his Washington Township home. Inside the bag, he said, was a picture long missing from his locker since the week after making his initial complaint.
The picture was of him with his twins, a son and daughter and then less than a year old, on his lap. He was dressed like Santa. On the picture was a bull's eye drawn over his family, with the letters DWB - one of the slogans Collins objected to, Driving While Black - printed on it.
"To see my two babies in the cross hairs of a scope, and to know that the road commission sat on this," Collins said, "I said I wasn't coming back to work."
He took a month off, the first of two leaves of absence. When he returned, he met with a human resources leader and an attorney hired by the commission, Collins said.
"I'm looking toward these people in good faith to help me out," Collins said.
They didn't, he said, instead taking a wait-and-see approach.
The stress of the situation, though, had by then infected his family life with a new strain.
"This was such a strain on my relationship with my wife," he said.
He said his wife, Heather, told him that she was at one point looking to leave, "not because I don't love you," she told him, "but because this has changed you."
Collins' attorney, James Fett, based in Pinckney, said the management at the road commission should have helped Collins. An offer to allow him to move into another position would have affected his family schedule in a negative way.
"When you have a hostile work environment, you don't inconvenience the victim," Fett said. "The road commission just wanted to find the easy way out."
The lawyer representing the road commission was out of town on Tuesday and did not return a message seeking comment on the suit, filed a year ago. Commission spokesman Craig Bryson said no one was fired after its investigation was completed, but he could not comment on specific allegations.
"We do have policies in place intended to prevent the kind of things he is alleging," Bryson said. "If we have employees coming to us with these types of concerns, we take them very, very seriously and we investigate."
But Fett said the commission failed to investigate the many complaints of harassment that Collins filed, only doing so 10 months after they started when equipment was damaged. After a safety pin failed to hold equipment in place, Collins believed it was done to intimidate or even injure him.
"At a very minimum, they should have done a timely investigation," Fett said. "You don't catch people when you let 10 months go by."
Collins said the harassment was racially charged. In his suit, he alleges that crackers and white bread were left within his workspace.
He said notes - which said such things as "Drop it Wonder Boy" and "Fear This, Cracker" - were left for him.
"Consider how this whole case would have been different if the color roles were reversed," Fett said. "Instead of a rifle scope, having a noose around Kevin and his children, imagine that."
Slogans on the clothing include: "black on black," "don't fear me because I'm black," "right of passage," "calling all brothers," "the brotherhood," "Million Man March" and "Driving while black."
Collins said in his suit that supervisors warned employees about wearing a Hooters shirt and a Confederate flag after complaints by a female employee and a black employee. Fett also said derogatory caricatures of Osama bin Laden were discouraged so as to not offend workers with Middle Eastern backgrounds.
Collins said this concern about workplace clothing should apply to all, saying, "I felt it (the clothing with slogans) was inappropriate."
But a longtime Pontiac activist and promoter, Kenneth Corr, also a longtime road commission employee, said the messages were not racially charged.
"A lot of people here at the road commission are sick and tired of seeing this one-sided story," Corr said. "It's been appalling. I don't have a racist bone in my body."
Corr, who is the poet laureate of Pontiac and has worked to improve academics and fight hunger and homelessness, said the messages that many black workers wear are positive signs of encouragement.
He sells the items, often donating proceeds to Pontiac-based charities.
"The Million Man March was about a million men getting together to try to put their community back together," Corr said. "How is that racism?"
He said another shirt with "driving while black" is an anti-racist slogan.
Corr said that Collins' background as a former deputy from Los Angeles County has affected his interpretation, prompting Collins to believe that support of the Pontiac Northern High School champion basketball team has been confused with gang-related clothing.
Corr said workers said they believe Collins is capitalizing on the issue of racial problems for profit.
"These are grown men who work here, not gang members," Corr said. "Do I think these allegations have any merit? Absolutely not."
Corr also said he has never seen a shirt with the slogan, "The only God is a black man," one of the slogans Collins allegedly cited in his complaint.
With its 558 full-time employees, the road commission has "consciously sought" a diverse work force reflective of society, said Bryson.
But it may come to a jury to decide if the workers get along or are hostile to one another.
Collins is seeking more than $25,000 in damages, and his lawyer said they are happy to let a jury decide the amount.
"He was afraid for his family," said Fett. "He was miserable. It was not worth it. Just imagine going to your mailbox and pulling that out."
Collins took most of 2003 off work on a medical leave, blaming the stress for his health problems.
He returned for a short while in early 2004, but he left as soon as he found a new job, working security with a retailer.
Besides the pay cut, he now has fewer benefits.
"There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about the fact that I had a job that I liked, a job that I enjoyed," Collins said. "That (road commission job) was probably the best job I ever had."
[url]http://www.theoaklandpress.com/stories/032305/loc_20050323022.shtml[/url]
2005-03-24 22:43 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Collins said in his suit that supervisors warned employees about wearing a Hooters shirt and a Confederate flag after complaints by a female employee and a black employee. [/QUOTE] No surprise.
2005-03-24 22:52 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Gabrielle]
Corr, who is the poet laureate of Pontiac [/QUOTE]
Why is it that all poet laureates are colored?