Civilian Employee Wins Settlement from the Army for Poor Work Environment in South Korea
This must have been quite a bad work environment to win a settlement from the Army:
An African-American civilian hospital employee “reached a significant settlement agreement” with the Army in late April after a lawsuit filed last year alleging that she was subjected to a racist and sexist command climate while working in South Korea.
Army Times
Shawlawn Beckford, who served on active duty for 11 years before returning in 2006 as a civilian, had accused the Army of supporting a hostile work environment at Brian Allgood Army Community Hospital at Yongsan, where she was an administrator from 2009 to 2015.
“As a civilian employee it is my duty to represent and uphold the Army’s mission, vision, and leadership philosophy — in or out of uniform,” Beckford said in a May 1 statement from the office of her attorney, Kellogg Hansen in Washington, D.C. “But I am more than a position. I am a person with feelings and emotions, and I was mistreated in a system that failed to protect me.”
Reached for comment by Army Times, Beckford requested to keep the dollar amount of the settlement private.
This is something I have seen before, people thinking it is okay to use racial slurs if they are of the race the slur is intended for:
“On a weekly basis during that time period, [the command sergeant major] would visit Ms. Beckford’s office and make belligerent, gendered comments toward her,” according to the lawsuit. “For example, he told her, ‘You’re a single parent. You’re a slut.’ ”
He also made comments about her race, the complaint said, calling her “just a house [N-word],” “dumb [N-word],” “our token Black person” and “ghetto.” (…….)The 15-6 investigation found that though he used racial slurs in the office, it wasn’t in a discriminatory manner, because he himself is black. Still, he was relieved of his position and barred from leading a command again, according to the complaint, but stayed working within the office and continued to harass Beckford.
You can read more about the poor work environment at the link, but the hospital at Yongsan Garrison seems to have had some highly unprofessional people working there.
Frankly, that NCO should have been given a General or Administrative discharge. It isn’t right to treat any woman that way. Even if she’s in a hostess bar or glass house, and especially not one who is working in an honorable profession.
Multiple really crappy uses of my tax dollars.
Docs are fairly incompetent also, know 3 people that had cancer misdiagnosed until it was too late.
Whoever decided that CSM wasn’t racist is a fool. He obviously was anti-Black although he’s Black himself. Also, the use of those particular terms is absolutely unacceptable in any place outside of antebellum plantation houses.
To be clear, I meant in my earlier post that the use of those particular terms was only acceptable in antebellum plantation houses during the antebellum (pre-Civil War) era.
A lot going on in this complaint, and there must be much more to it than what this article covered:
She was in Korea six years (2009-2015)*, which means she extended…twice. If it’s a hostile work environment, why extend once? In fact, why not request a curtailment of the initial 3 yr tour? — which happens a lot.
And just how did those conversations really go? Did they start friendly? Who was it (really) that started taking the conversation south?
There aren’t rebuttal statements in this article (pretty one-sided) although if the “official” investigation concluded the complainant is entitled damages then one can only assume rebuttal wasn’t convincing enough to defend the actions of the gov’t.
* this was during a period of the huge LQA audit AND renewed enforcement of the 5 yr limit, DoD wide. Five year civilians were being booted from OCONUS assignments with reckless abandon. Point being, she really had to fight hard to stay for six years making this all very curious.
The events were always witnessed and I stayed because I had a family to take care of. I did make many attempts to find a new job. I also kept hoping that the “next command ” would. E different. No one knows the truth but me and the courts.. my story is the same as many others..it happened and still happens..