Eight current and former employees filed a federal lawsuit this week alleging that a “Good Ole Boy” network of white males, who have spent decades wrongfully demoting and screaming racial obscenities at black workers, govern the Georgia mill where General Mills produces cereal and trail mix.
The class-action lawsuit, filed in Atlanta’s Northern District of Georgia, accused General Mills of breaching federal civil rights laws as well as state and federal racketeering statutes.
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The plaintiffs specifically accuse white supervisors at the Covington facility of committing many racist acts over the course of two decades with the intent to penalize and intimidate black employees. The claim asserts that a black employee’s desk received a noose in 1993. Another complaint claims that one of the plaintiffs scrawled the term “coon” on a work form.
“In the 1990s, white employees, without fear of repercussions from management or HR, openly used the N-word and other racial slurs and attempted to intimidate black employees with racial hostility,” the complaint states.
According to the lawsuit, senior administrators at General Mills never penalized the supervisors for their racist behavior.
According to the lawsuit, “HR routinely informs racist white supervisors about the content of complaints against them, as well as the identity of the black employees who made the complaint.” “This frequently results in retaliation against black employees.”
Established in 1988, the Covington plant of General Mills manufactures Chex, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, and Trix cereals.
General Mills has declined to comment on the litigation. “General Mills has a long-standing and ongoing commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and we do not tolerate discrimination of any kind,” the business stated in a statement.
Georgia attorney Douglas Dean, who represents the black employees, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Recent incidents of claimed racial discrimination in the workplace have resulted in substantial legal settlements. Equinox Fitness, for example, agreed to a $11.2 million payment in 2023 after a former black employee in New York accused a white male coworker of refusing to accept her as supervisor.
Last year, a federal jury awarded $3.2 million in damages to a black former employee of a Tesla factory in California who claimed widespread racial discrimination at the site.
