HONOLULU (AP) — The world's largest military contractor will pay a record $2.5 million (euro1.7 million) to a former avionics electrician who claims he was called the N-word, threatened with death and laid off after he reported racism at Lockheed Martin Corp.
The settlement between Lockheed and Charles Daniels, filed in U.S. District Court on Wednesday, was the largest settlement with an individual in a racial discrimination case handled by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
''I have to believe it was strictly due to the color of my skin,'' said Daniels, 45. ''I was born in an era where I was told things are going to get better. We still have a long way to go.''
Daniels said he was targeted on nearly a daily basis by co-workers while working in South Carolina, Florida, Washington and Hawaii from 1999 to 2001.
Among the allegations: Co-workers told him he could be lynched or buried in a roadside grave where his body would never be found. Weekly Ku Klux Klan newsletters were distributed in an employee break room in South Carolina. One co-worker said ''we should do to blacks what Hitler did to the Jews.''
Four co-workers and a crew leader that Daniels worked with are being fired, according to the commission created during the Civil Rights movement.
Lockheed spokesman Joe Stout said these were isolated incidents that don't reflect the Bethesda, Maryland-based company as a whole.
''Lockheed Martin does not tolerate discrimination and harassment in the workplace, and we have long-standing policies that prohibit race-based jokes, comments or retaliation of any kind,'' Stout said. ''The matters involved in the lawsuit were not nationwide.''
Daniels, who is now working in Georgia for another company, said he reported the harassment to Lockheed Martin but no action was taken to protect him. When he was reassigned to work in Maine, he filed his complaint and begged a human resources manager not to force him to go. He was then laid off.
