Dive Brief:
- Nabors Corporate Services, Inc. and C&J Well Services, Inc., the former's operational successor, will pay a total of $1.2 million to nine black employees and one white employee to settle a lawsuit from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
- The oil companies subjected black workers to a work environment made hostile by a "pervasive use of racial slurs." Furthermore, managers gave black employees jobs with lower pay and fired them in retaliation for reporting harassment based on race, an EEOC press release said. One worker, for example, was fired after objecting to being called a racial slur at a meeting in front of his supervisors.
- The companies also agreed to train employees of their rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, revise their policies on race discrimination, harassment and retaliation and not to employ four individuals the EEOC says participated in the harassment as part of the two-year consent decree settling the case.
Dive Insight:
Petty slights, annoyances and isolated incidents, unless the isolated incident is extremely serious, do not create illegality, EEOC noted in a guidance. The conduct must create a work environment that would be "intimidating, hostile, or offensive to reasonable people to be unlawful," EEOC said. Offensive conduct can include "offensive jokes, slurs, epithets or name calling, physical assaults or threats, intimidation, ridicule or mockery, insults or put-downs, offensive objects or pictures" and interfere with work performance.
That said, harassment need not be "hellish" to be actionable, remarked one judge in reviewing a case in which an employee was called a racial slur twice by his direct supervisor.
To keep harassment from occurring, the Commission recommends that employers turn to prevention as a tool to eliminate workplace harassment. Employers are advised to:
- Communicate to employees that it will not tolerate unwelcome harassing conduct.
- Establish a robust complaint process.
- Implement anti-harassment training.
- Take swift action once an employee complains.
Attention to culture can also be important. Many employers are adopting unconscious bias training as a solution. But some experts warn that training won't necessarily change behavior, Calvin Lai, assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis, previously told HR Dive. Still, experts generally agree that for employers to reduce bias in the workplace, training is a must — and that it must be backed by good policies and a culture of respect and inclusion.