MEMPHIS, Tennessee – Several former and current employees at Minneapolis-based Cargill, Inc., have brought suit against the company claiming that they were subjected to asbestos hazards in the workplace and faced both racial discrimination and retaliation.
Along with the company, the employees list four local Cargill management team members as defendants. The suit against Cargill was filed by nine current and former employees of the company: Patricia Coburn, Avery Doss, Keith Howard, Francois Johnson, Terry Lewis, Vincent Mickens, Connie Seay, Cornell Trotter and Tomeka Winston. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee at the end of last month.

All of the workers had previously filed complaints with the Tennessee Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and received a right-to-sue letter from the Commission. That letter states that the EEOC had concluded there were violations under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That law prohibits discrimination by employers on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

The claimants have filed the lawsuit pro se, and will be serving as their own attorneys in the case. The EEOC says that the agency can not release any information related to the suit, and Cargill stated through its director of media relations that Cargill’s policy is not to comment on pending litigation. David Feider did stress that Cargill is an equal opportunity employer and does not practice discrimination.

The basis of the suit stems from the abandoned asbestos removal performed at a facility in Memphis that is owned by Cargill. The property, on Second St. in Memphis was owned by Continental Grain, which was sold to Cargill Inc., in July 1999.

Immediately before the sale was concluded, Continental had begun removing asbestos from the Memphis building. After the company changed hands, though, Cargill did not complete the asbestos removal project.

The lawsuit states that Cargill knew of the hazardous conditions within the plant since acquiring the building. Asbestos is considered an occupational and air quality hazard. Asbestos fibers released into the air by materials that contain asbestos can be inhaled by workers and visitors, and eventually cause serious illnesses. Those illnesses include lung cancer, asbestosis and mesothelioma, a rare lung cancer that is only found in those who were exposed to asbestos.

In 2000, an area of the facility was found to clear of asbestos by a Tennessee OSHA investigator, but six years later, a representative from the corporate office visited the Memphis plant and asked about certain tile in the building. An asbestos sign was placed in the area immediately after the representative noticed disturbed floor tile.

Johnson and Mickens, union stewards representing other employees, raised questions about the presence of the asbestos and what it meant for those who worked in the area around the disturbed tiles. They stated that only black employees work in that area.

The response from the company was that the employees had been receiving asbestos training for the past five years. The company did not explain how receiving asbestos training would deter the hazards of being exposed to asbestos for the past six years.

All the employees deny that they ever received any asbestos training. The company has produced documents purporting to be signed by the defendants and stating that they’d received asbestos training, but the paper appeared to be altered, said Mickens. Mickens and Johnson refused to sign a paper presented to them at the meeting, and both were suspended. Other employees said that they were asked to sign papers with no heading, date or identifying information.

Johnson said that whenever they asked for a copy of papers and documents that they signed off on, the company told them that it as for company records, not individual employee records.
Other employees say that they signed the papers, but only because they were told that if they didn’t sign them, they could “just go home”.

Cargill has not yet entered an official response to the lawsuit.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Asbestos Exposure, Asbestos Litigation, Tennessee. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. Responses are currently closed, but you trackback from your own site.