United Airlines officials and the city’s Department of Human Relations said Wednesday they are investigating charges of racial and sexual harassment by three African-American employees against two airline supervisors.
Human Relations Commissioner Clarence Wood also said his office has received phone calls from at least six other United employees complaining about similar harassment.
The charges came to light after Ald. Robert Shaw (9th) introduced a resolution to the Chicago City Council calling for an investigation of the airline’s involving “unfair work assignments, sexual harassment, anonymous hate notes, verbal harassment and the appearance of swastikas painted on airport walls.”
Shaw said that he and attorneys have spoken with 12 United employees-some African-American, some Hispanic and some of Jewish descent-who all said that they had been harassed in some way over the course of the last year.
Joe Hopkins, a spokesman for United, one of the nation’s largest airlines, said that there will be an internal investigation and that a memo by United President John Edwardson was distributed to all employees, saying in part:
“Under no circumstances will United tolerate any kind of unlawful discrimination or harassment of employees.”
One black male and two black women, who worked as ramp service employees at O’Hare International Airport, filed their complaints Friday, Wood said.
The women alleged they were sexually harassed by the same man. The male complainant said he received an unsatisfactory response from another supervisor when he asked why a white employee with less seniority had a better job. The man said that after he complained about being passed over for promotion, white employees verbally harassed him and racial slurs were written on bathroom walls.
