New Orleans -- The Miami office of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission announced that Adelphia Communications Corp. will pay $1,050,000 to
settle a racial-harassment lawsuit brought in Florida by six former local
employees.
The consent decree has been filed with the U.S. District Court for the
Southern District of Florida, Miami Division, the EEOC said. The settlement is
subject to the approval of Judge Adalberto Jordan there.
The employees brought the complaint last year, alleging that an Adelphia
manager placed a hangman's noose on display in his office. This led to claims
that the manager and, therefore, Adelphia maintained a racially hostile
workplace, according to the EEOC.
African-American employees claimed that they complained about the noose and
about alleged verbal abuse to high-level regional and human-resources
executives, who did not remedy the situation, the federal agency said.
In addition to the monetary relief, the cable company is required to
distribute and post anti-discrimination-policy statements; to retrain managers
on aspects of the 1964 Civil Rights Act; and to appoint an ombudsman to hear
discrimination complaints.
'Employers must face the reality that the presence of a noose is unacceptable
and such conduct will be met with the full force of the agency's litigation
efforts,' Delner Franklin-Thomas, regional attorney for the EEOC's Miami
district office, said in a prepared statement.
