In order to resolve a federal discrimination action, United Airlines will pay $99,000 to an Asian American employee who claimed that a supervisor had physically assaulted him, called him an anti-Asian slur, and instructed him to remove his mask.
According to a press release from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the event happened at the height of the pandemic, when anti-Asian hate crimes were on the rise, and involved Alsunbayar Davaabat, a Mongolian American who was a driver at the airline’s Denver catering plant at the time. According to the announcement, Davaabat quit since the corporation did nothing in the immediate aftermath.
According to the commission, the accusations started during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, when people of Asian origin and Asian Americans faced violence and animosity from the public due to their race and/or ethnicity. This was because of the widespread belief that Asians were the ones who started the virus or pandemic. The accusations showed how backlash discrimination in the workplace was a manifestation of public hatred.
In a statement, United Airlines claimed that the employee had turned down a chance to rejoin the firm and that the manager in the matter had been fired following an inquiry.
According to the airline, United is happy that a settlement will spare all parties from drawn-out litigation.
According to the EEOC lawsuit, Davaabat and a colleague were in the employee lunchroom in January 2021, finishing their lunches, when a management instructed them to pull up their masks. The manager, who appeared to have misheard Davaabat, turned back to him after both of them said, “Yes, sir,” and inquired, “What did you say?” The complainant said this prior to using a racial term against him. The manager then twisted Davaabat’s arm to look at his work badge, leaned into him, and asked him threateningly if he respected his job, according to the complaint.
According to the complaint, the manager slapped Davaabat on the back and said, “Lucky for you, I’m a good guy.”
According to the lawsuit, Davaabat made a written statement to another management and reported the incident to a supervisor, but he was not contacted that day, so he handed in his two weeks’ notice. And during the last two weeks, he received no calls from anyone at the company. The complaint notes that United offered the manager a compensation increase in April 2021 while conducting an inquiry into the event, which started more than a month later. According to the complaint, the manager signed a separation agreement months later that permitted him to retire in lieu of being fired.
According to the complaint, United further facilitated and intensified Davaabat’s racially hostile workplace by failing to take any action to look into his claims or shield him from additional racially hostile behavior.
Davaabat, who started working for the company in 2019, has long been subjected to harassment and discrimination from coworkers, according to the lawsuit. According to the complaint, his coworkers refused to call him by his nickname, Bondok, for months because they thought it was too hard to pronounce. They chose to refer to him as Chinaman instead.
The complaint claimed that management knew or should have known about Davaabat’s coworkers’ discriminatory behavior, which included calling him a “Chinaman.”
In addition to assessing its own equal employment opportunity rules and providing the commission with regular compliance reports, the airline agreed to grant Davaabat 75,000 fly miles as part of the settlement. Additionally, United will modify its policy on workplace violence to guarantee that inquiries into incidents of physical threats or violence are started within 72 hours of the report.
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