Need to investigate further.

KCChiefsFan

A manager, IMHO, has singled a person out as a reason for project deadlines not being meet. The manager sent memos to his executive level, the project manager’s executive level, the person who he’s singled out executive level and has copied some others basically campaigning against this lead engineer, so he can confiscate this very high profile project, all the while the lead engineer never being communicated with on any of the subjects. The lead engineers direct management team never knew any of this was happening either until a memo was forwarded to them from their director. Well, eventually the project did get confiscated because the campaigning manager threatened to pull his people off if the project wasn’t transferred to him. Now the lead engineer, who is black, has sent us a memo saying the reason why this manager campaigned against him was because of his race and age (he’s 29). While I feel there are a lot of office politics going on and I don’t condone the campaigning managers actions at all (especially because he never talked to the lead engineer about any of his concerns) the lead engineer hasn’t come to us with any other corroborating evidence of race discrimination besides he’s been replaced by a white development manager (not lead engineer) whom he says doesn’t have as much experience as him in lead engineer role, the campaigning manager didn’t have good reason for campaigning against him to such a high degree and that some of the statements made were false.

This lead engineer is one of very few black lead engineers out of 20k employees and has had fair reviews in the past with no complaints from other staff on record so I think the situation warrants some more consideration but the HR director has wrote this up as high octane office politics and doesn’t want us to spend a lot of time on it. I think I can convince him on spending more time on the investigation but don’t know how to go about investigating it further besides what we’ve already done (interviewing the manager and the lead engineer).

Any suggestions would be very appreciated.

Would the lead engineer have a case if he decided to go to the EEOC? This is an at-will employment state so my understanding on this issue is the employer has a right to transfer the project or workload for any reason we want.

How would the EEOC go about investigating this situation?

Rockie

First of all, there has been serious erosion of employment at will in recent years backed up by court cases because of express or implied employment contracts, federal and state employment laws, etc. I don't know many employers who just fire at will, but it does happen and can be valid and legal. The problem is all the other variables that the law has put in place to protect employees.

What EEOC will look at are some of the things you have alluded to. How many minorities do you have in high profile positions? Why was this particular black engineer targeted? Were their similar deficiencies among white counterparts that were not addressed in the same fashion. If the individual truly was not doing his job and it was squarely his fault, then documentation must be presented. It sounds like there was a vicious campaign to discredit this person because someone else wanted his project. Now whether this was really racially motivated or not, I can't say. But....from my experience with the EEOC, it appears that they could surely make a good case of it.

As far as his age, 29 is not a protected class. You have to be 40 or over to have a consideration of age discrimination.

What is at best, a nasty, vicious, political campaign, may, in fact,turn out to be a lengthy and expensive legal battle which your company may end of setting out of court. I don't think I would want to take this one to a jury.

Good luck.

Don D

I agree totally with Rockie's wisdom. This is a bit of deja vu for me. We have the same sort of shenanagins going on with our rather large engineer groups, each pulling against the other, and those within each group doing the same. But, it usually doesn't rise to this level of boil before its diffused and the culprit is admonished. In your case, hopefully some senior company official can intervene before this thing takes on a life of its own and does wind up with the EEOC.

Theresa Gegen TX

The EEOC would probably jump on this, if as you say, there are very few African American engineers. The EEOC expects to see what most HR people would expect to see: Due process to the employee -- documentation being given to the employee spelling out what he was doing wrong and giving him an opportunity to conform to the employer's expectations, before being replaced.

Now in this case, the employee is still employed as an Engineer, and it does not appear that he has been demoted or anything, so it may be that he may not have much of a case. (How has he been damaged).

On the other hand, do you want to go to court and say "he just got squashed by office politics and it is really not discrimination" -- office politics sounds almost like a code word for discrimination to me!!

Good Luck!!