April 15, 1998
BALTIMORE (AP) -- Black workers at a Ford Motor Credit Co. service center were punished more harshly than white colleagues and passed over for promotion by white workers they had trained, a lawsuit claims.
Twelve current and former black employees are seeking $660 million in the lawsuit, which claims Ford Motor Credit discriminated in hiring, evaluation and promotion.
The suit names the credit company as well as the operations managers, customer service managers and several other managers at the Regional Operations Center in Columbia.
Workers attempted to address what they claimed was a lack of black managers during a staff meeting but were told by one of the operations managers that "if you don't like the way the place is run, you can leave," the suit claims.
Ford officials said they had not seen the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court, but took such allegations seriously and would investigate the claims.
"Ford Credit along with Ford Motor Company and all of its operations has a zero-tolerance policy on discrimination of any kind," said Sonia Mishra, spokeswoman for the Michigan-based Ford Motor Credit Co.
Last year, 35 black workers and supervisors at two Louisville, Kentucky, plants filed four federal suits alleging discrimination. In addition, complaints about plant practices have been filed with the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights. Mishra said 30 of the 35 complaints have been settled through mediation.
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