The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has filed a lawsuit against United Airlines, accusing the Chicago-based carrier of failing to investigate one of its own managers who was accused of calling an employee of Mongolian descent a highly offensive racial slur.
The lawsuit was filed in a Colorado district court on Thursday, which covers Denver International Airport, where United has a major hub, including an in-house aircraft catering facility.
It’s from inside this catering facility where the alleged discrimination took place when an employee was threatened and racially profiled by his manager.
Alsunbayar Davaabat moved to the United States from his native Mongolia in 1996 and became a naturalized US citizen in 2009. Ten years later, Davaabat was hired as a catering truck driver for United out of its Denver facility, and almost straight away, he started to be racially abused by his colleagues.
Rather than calling him by his name, Davaabat’s coworkers would openly call him to his face “Chinaman,” and this abuse continued for at least six months until they finally started to call him a simplified version of his own name.
It was, however, during the pandemic when Davaabat claims the level of racial abuse against him was ratcheted up to another level – and this time, it was one of Davaabat’s senior managers.
During this time, hate crimes and racial abuse against people of Asian descent were on the rise owing to fears that they were somehow responsible for COVID-19, and Davaabat believes this may have contributed to his manager’s changed attitude towards him.
In one incident in January 2021, Davaabat says his manager threatened him when he finished his lunch break because he failed to immediately mask up as he was leaving the employee break room.
Davaabat’s manager misheard what he said and shouted at him: “What did you say chink?” He then allegedly grabbed and twisted Davaabat’s arm before insinuating that he could have Davaabat terminated.
Left shaking by what had happened, Davaabat immediately reported the incident to his line supervisor but the lawsuit claims he was given no reassurance that his job was safe or that United would even bother to investigate his claims.
By the end of his work shift, Davaabat was left so fearful by United’s lack of action that he submitted his two-week resignation letter.
During this two-week notice period, United still failed to investigate Davaabat’s claims and no one from the airline, including its corporate safety and security department reached out to him to make sure he was okay or felt safe in the workplace.
In fact, Davaabat felt anything but safe and felt compelled to leave United at the end of his two-week notice period, given that United was seemingly taking no action to investigate his claims.
United did, however, eventually investigate Davaabat’s claims and in July 2021, the manager at the center of the allegations was allowed to retire in lieu of termination, even though the airline had received previous reports of the manager using racial slurs in the workplace and acting inappropriately towards employees.
In a statement , a spokesperson for United States told us: “United took appropriate remedial action. After an extensive investigation, the manager in this case was removed from the workplace and is no longer with United. We offered Mr. Davaabat re-employment in 2021, but he declined.”
An EEOC attorney Mary Jo O’Neill, criticized United over its behavior in this case, saying:“Employers need to remain vigilant in preventing their own managers from engaging in harassment in the workplace,” O’Neill commented on Thursday.
“Employers must act promptly in investigating harassment allegations and must immediately take steps to stop the harassment and take appropriate disciplinary and remedial actions, especially where the harassing incident involves both a racial slur and physical assault.”
