Non-black employees targeted for ‘negative treatment’ at NC workplace, lawsuit says
A woman who worked at a North Carolina hospital was treated unfairly on the job because she wasn’t black, she says.
Isabel Garcia, who is Hispanic, heard her African-American boss at Alamance Regional Medical Center repeatedly talk to black employees about firing non-black workers, according to a federal lawsuit filed last week against the hospital and Cone Health.
In about January 2018, Garcia reported the behavior to a hospital official, saying her boss “targeted non-African-American employees for negative treatment,” the lawsuit says.
Days later, the official in a staff meeting said the hospital didn’t have racism and that “complaints of race discrimination would be treated as ‘gossip,’ which he claimed was a terminable offense,” according to the document.
Garcia, who handled patient records in the emergency department, had been working for the hospital for more than a decade before that conversation, the lawsuit says.
Also during Garcia’s time as an employee, she was approved to receive “intermittent” time off through the Family and Medical Leave Act, the document says.
Her boss asked to retroactively deny one of those requests, “claiming that it was not for a medical condition,” according to court records. Another time, she got a written notice for taking approved leave, the lawsuit says.
Days later, the boss got angry about lunch schedules and “left at least one of Garcia’s non-African-American co-workers in tears,” according to the document.
The boss put Garcia on administrative leave while looking into allegations she was “rude” during a meeting about the outburst, the lawsuit says. Garcia was later fired and escorted from the hospital, according to the document.
“Cone Health does not comment on pending litigation,” spokesman Doug Allred said in an email to McClatchy newsgroup.
In all, the lawsuit says it seeks relief for racial discrimination, retaliation and interference with the Family and Medical Leave Act.
The court document also says non-black employees at Alamance Regional Medical Center were fired for the same behavior that left black employees unpunished.
Several non-black employees in 2017 lost their jobs after drinking alcohol on a lunch outing while “African-American employees received no discipline of any sort,” according to the lawsuit.
This story was originally published July 24, 2019 at 11:38 AM with the headline "Non-black employees targeted for ‘negative treatment’ at NC workplace, lawsuit says."
