Suit Claims Discrimination at Oil Services Company

About 230 current and former employees at a Louisiana-based oil services company have filed a civil rights lawsuit, saying they were forced to work in facilities where racist graffiti, slurs and discrimination are commonplace.

The lawsuit was filed this week in a Texas federal court against Turner Industries Group LLC, which is headquartered in Baton Rouge and has denied any harrassment or discrimination.

Black workers said Tuesday that they've complained for more than a decade about nooses hung in workplaces, racial slurs, segregated bathrooms and unequal treatment in Turner facilities in Louisiana and Texas. They said company supervisors and officials did little or nothing about the complaints and, in some instances, retaliated against the black employees for complaining.

Yvonne Turner, who said she has worked for the company at sites in both states, described showing up at a Sulphur, La., work site where a protective suit was stuffed, tagged with her name and hung from a noose. She said a supervisor laughed when told about it.

I'm fed up. I'm tired," she said after a news conference held with local civil rights leaders. "We're not here trying to get money. We're not here trying to cause trouble. We're here for justice."

Another woman, Cheryl Falola, described traveling to a work location where employees were separated by race and the black employees were sent home and replaced with white workers. She said at a different site she was repeatedly harassed by a white man who was working with her.

"Every day I would go to work he would throw racial slurs," Falola said. "My stomach was hurting and knotting up because I know I have to work with that every day."

In a statement, Turner said many of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit no longer work for Turner and some never worked for the company.

The company blamed a "lengthy campaign by plaintiffs' attorneys in New York and Texas" for the lawsuit and said its records show few of those participating in the lawsuit ever reported discrimination complaints to the company. [MORE]