Posted by SONY BMG AXES BLACKS ONLY: Label found to have discriminated in layoffs. EURWeb (January 10, 2007) Sony BMG, which is home to artists like Beyonce and Christina Aguilera, was recently found to have discriminated against its Black employees in its Manhattan office during layoffs in 2004. The company went through a merger and restructuring in the summer of 2004 and the [b]New York office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) found the company guilty of discrimination against its Black employees. [/b]
The EEOC found that the six Blacks in its Manhattan office were issued pink slips, but none of their white counterparts. The only black worker that remained was a mail clerk. Of the six Blacks fired, three accepted severance packages and three were asked to leave “involuntarily.” None of eight whites and one Asian at the office were given the ax. This ruling gives former field marketing rep Tamieka Blair, 32, the right to sue Sony BMG, saying she “was the victim of race discrimination.” Blair, who introduced new releases to Long Island music stores, told The New York Post she loved her $31,000-a-year job. She went on to explain that she initially accepted her layoff after a boss told her “it was just a numbers game.” But once the workers who were fired compared notes with each other, “we realized it was all the black people,” she said. Sony BMG maintains that it based its layoff decisions on job performance, but the EEOC said the company had “no documented procedure for determining who the best players were,” and “lacked performance standards.” Ms. Blair, via lawyer Mitchell Carlinsky, will file suit this week in Brooklyn federal court holding the company accountable. Source: http://www.eurweb.com/story/eur30754.cfm