A dozen current and former Black employees are now suing Dow Chemical Co., alleging that they faced racial discrimination or retaliation for complaining about unfair treatment and hostile workplace conditions, mostly occurring at the company’s Midland, Michigan, plant. The plaintiffs are all represented by Detroit attorney Carla Aikens, who filed the 12 individual lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan over the past year and a half. Sushma Jones, who filed her complaint in July 2023, alleges that she faced harassment from her white male coworkers soon after starting work at Dow as a logistics technician in January 2022. An employee works at a base of Dow Chemical Company in Zhangjiagang, east China’s Jiangsu Province, March 8, 2020. TO GO WITH XINHUA HEADLINES OF MARCH 25, 2020. (Photo by Xinhua/Xinhua via Getty) In March of that year, she was accused by a white head operator of cutting a hose that led to a chemical spill. Later, another supervisor discovered the hose had broken from wear and tear, but Jones contends that after that incident, the white supervisor and other white male coworkers would not help her with any of her tasks, making her job “hard and stressful.” When she complained to her trainer that she was being “harassed, bullied and overworked,” he took no corrective action, and the harassment by her white male coworkers continued, she claims. She also filed several complaints with Dow’s human resources office, as well as ethics complaints, as directed by HR. Immediately after she filed the ethics complaints reporting harassment, she said she was moved to a different, less desirable shift and was denied overtime pay. Meanwhile, the white coworkers she had alleged were harassing her did not receive less favorable assignments. While walking to a staff meeting that June, a coworker told Jones he had just watched the movie about former slave and abolitionist Harriet Tubman and that Jones looked just like her. That comment “triggered” Jones because the same man had told Jones to “stop working like a slave” a few months prior, she claims. Right after she complained to management about those racial comments, she was moved to a different building, again with a less desirable job and shift. Work-related stress caused Jones to develop major depression and anxiety, and a doctor told her she may need to find a different job. Dow’s investigation of her complaints determined there was a “personality clash” but found no evidence of racial bias, the complaint says. Dow violated state and federal civil rights laws protecting employees against discrimination by race and gender by taking adverse actions against her after she reported harassing behavior by coworkers, the lawsuit says. The company also treated her differently than white and male employees, and its discriminatory practices created an intimidating and hostile work environment. Jones seeks compensatory and exemplary damages, lost wages and legal fees. In its answer to her complaint, Dow denied most of her allegations and contended that she had requested the shift changes she received. “At no time did Dow discriminate against or retaliate against Plaintiff,” the answer said, arguing that its actions with respect to Jones were for “legitimate, non-discriminatory” reasons. Similar allegations and complaints were made by other Black workers in the subsequent lawsuits filed. Kelvin Walker, a Black man who says he witnessed the harassment and unfair treatment of Jones by her white male coworkers, filed suit against Dow on Oct. 16, alleging that the company failed to adequately train and promote Black workers and disproportionately punished Black workers for alleged misconduct that white workers rarely had to answer for. Throughout his employment, Walker said he was subjected to racial slurs, including a coworker who called him “the N-word” without facing any consequences. After Walker called an anonymous company hotline to complain about “the ongoing mistreatment of Black employees,” his complaint says, “Dow knew” that he had called, and soon after, he was accused of manipulating his work time records, written up for the infraction and fired, despite having no prior related disciplinary history. Walker claims that he had taken medical leave for a documented medical condition since he started with the company in 2017 and that Dow had no issue with how he documented the leave until he spoke up about workplace discrimination. He is suing for wrongful termination, along with claims of racial discrimination and retaliation. Production worker Roger Ivey worked for Dow for just four months before he was forced to resign due to racially discriminatory treatment, his lawsuit says. Shortly after taking the job, Ivey noticed pictures of monkeys on multiple company lockers, which he interpreted as racial harassment directed toward Black employees. When he informed “Defendant’s agents” about the “disturbing racial imagery,” they “explained it was not meant to be discriminatory” and removed them but took no further corrective action, he alleges. Ivey said he was not adequately trained for his position, which was the training that he requested, knowing it would be needed in order to get promoted. But his requests were ignored, he said. He also claims that his efforts to perform his job were “actively sabotaged” by white coworkers, including materials needed to perform his job being moved to other locations and machines he worked on being tampered with, which had the effect of slowing down his productivity and appeared maliciously intended to cause errors that would reflect badly on him. Ivey further alleges that he was blamed for “some errors and incidents that occurred on other shifts or that were cause by others.” This ongoing harassment led him to feel stressed and to fear for his safety, and to seek mental health counseling. Ivey resigned in August 2022 after suffering severe mental distress as a result of the hostile work environment and lack of support from Dow, claims his lawsuit filed on Nov. 8. He seeks compensatory and exemplary damages, including past and future lost wages and legal fees. Rosetta Biggins, a Black woman whose lawsuit against Dow was filed on Nov. 7, claims she faced relentless racial and gender discrimination as a production worker at the Midland plant. Coming to the job in July of 2022 with prior forklift operation and machine handling experience, she says she was motivated to earn a promotion from an “LT1” to “LT2” role, which she was told could be accomplished within 30 days if workers “could learn the necessary machines.” But her supervisor, Joe Bushre, a white man, kept denying her the chance to train for the LT2 job while training and promoting new white male trainees who came along after her, even those with fewer skills and experience, she contends. Meanwhile, she and the other Black/mixed race co-worker in her building were assigned menial tasks such as shoveling snow that their white coworkers were not required to do. Biggins says she shared her concerns with Bushre, explaining that her lack of advancement was unfair and, she believed, based on gender discrimination. Throughout her time at Dow, the complaint says, he made comments that the LT2 role she sought “was not a woman’s job” and “expressed his belief that women were not capable of performing the tasks required.” Biggins eventually resigned “when it became clear she wasn’t ever going to advance at Dow.” Her lawsuit claims that “the company has a pattern and/or practice of mistreatment of Black men and women, and women generally of all races, and that Dow’s agents have sought to threaten and intimidate Dow employees who have tried to come forward in an attempt to silence them.” Another woman now suing Dow for discrimination claims that the company held a meeting with its upper management in 2019 to discuss how to improve overall participation. She spoke up and described issues she was experiencing on the job as a Black woman, after which she alleges that she was targeted for termination, reported MLive News. Shortly after the meeting, she was written up, placed on a performance improvement plan, and moved to a different building, her lawsuit states. She then filed a grievance with her union and reached out to Dow’s ethics department. In January 2020, Dow placed the woman on leave after its HR department received a tip that she had used a cellphone during work hours, which she denied. She was fired the following day. During the grievance process, it was discovered the woman had not been working while using her cellphone, and Dow rehired her in February 2021. She has since applied for several positions but has been denied for all of them, her lawsuit claims. Dow has denied all of the claims of racial and gender discrimination, retaliation and hostile work environment in its legal answers to the lawsuits that it has filed so far. The discovery process is still ongoing in all of the cases, with both parties deposing witnesses and filing multiple motions to compel or deny the release of documents. A Dow spokesman previously said the company conducted extensive internal reviews and determined that the allegations in the complaints are not substantiated, according to ABC12 News. ‘Working Like a Slave’: Black Employees Were Called Racial Slurs, Subjected to Pictures of Monkeys and Unfair Treatment at Dow Chemical Plant, a Dozen Lawsuits Say