NAACP will join suit against Eli Lilly
Indianapolis - There’s a new development in the lawsuit filed against Eli Lilly on charges of racial discrimination. Current and former employees allege, because they were black, their pay checks suffered.
The national NAACP president will be in Indianapolis Thursday to announce that they’re adding their organization to the list of plaintiffs in the case.
They say it’s now a national concern, complaints coming in from all over the country, not just Indianapolis.
This case first caught the nation’s attention when an Eli Lilly employee came forward with allegations that a black doll with a noose tied around it’s neck was left on her desk at work
“My first reaction to the noose was fear, real fear that I felt,” said plaintiff Cassandra Welch.
Welch was one of the first plaintiffs in the discrimination case against Eli Lilly.
“I can truly feel what happened in the history books,” continued Welch.
She says working there was like working back in time.
“Employees being referred to as buckwheat, the N-word was a regular thing. At the company there have been advertisements posted on the board advertising for a small black “N” that could fit on a flatbed,” Welch explained.
Eli Lilly issued the following response in regards to the allegations: “The allegations against the company are not reflective of who we are, what we value and how we operate.”
“This is a company that likes to check the boxes,” said Joshua Rose, Welch’s attorney.
Rose says you can see the company’s diversity police on paper, but you don’t see it in action in how they treat their black employees.
“Diversity to them means selling their products to a diverse range of people,” said Rose.
Welch says one of their diversity policies is to hold, what they call, conflict management sessions.
It’s a meeting where employees are encouraged to say what’s on their mind, with a promise that nothing leaves the room once it’s over.
Welch describes one that was held with her supervisor. “She said in that session in front of two other Lilly employees that she absolutely believes that African Americans are not equivalent to Caucasian Americans, that blacks can’t do the same work as whites. That they don’t deserve the same pay as whites and I was supposed to walk out of that session and say oh thank god she told me and our feeling are out on the table and everything’s fine. Well everything was not fine.”
She says she went straight to Human Resources for help.
“I went immediately to HR and they said ‘no, wait, wait we can’t hear this, you can’t share anything that came out of that session. We don’t document that,’” said Welch.
Plantiffs say they are suing for change. Their goal is to get Eli Lilly to create a policy where incentives given to managers for meeting equal opportunity goals, and penalties are executed for failing to meet them.
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