Interviews with lawyers for Black and women employees suing Crown Oil Company for discrimination, reveal a shocking portrait of racism and corporate arrogance. Cyrus Mehri, co-counsel in the case. In sworn deposition testimony, Crown managers and supervisors admit being aware of the use of the N-word inside the workplace and some admit using it themselves inside and outside the workplace. Affirmative action plans maintained at Crown's Baltimore headquarters were found to have been destroyed by the company prompting Judge Richard Schell to issue a court order preventing further destruction of documents. Companies usually try to correct problems.
Crown still has no affirmative action program.
Reuben Guttman, co-counsel in the case. Three years ago, Crown locked out 250 employees at its Pasadena, Texas, refinery, about 40 percent of the workers are African-American, Hispanic and women. The average age of the locked out workers is 49 years old while the average seniority is 18 to 20 years. They hired no Blacks for some 20 years until the early 1970s when federal regulations forced them to hire large numbers of African-Americans. They never had a problem with seniority until Blacks started getting 20 and more years.