Muckraker: In Justice Department Civil Rights Division, Employees Claim Discrimination

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003205.php

In Civil Rights Division, Employees Claim Discrimination
By Paul Kiel - May 14, 2007, 12:41 PM

On her last day in the Civil Rights Division's voting rights section, an African-American 33-year veteran of the Justice Department wanted to send her colleagues a message: "I leave with fond memories of the Voting Section I once knew," she wrote, "and I am gladly escaping the 'Plantation' it has become. For my colleagues still under the 'whip', hold on - 'The Times They are A Changing.'"

The woman, who retired in late December of last year, was not alone in seeing racial discrimination in the Civil Rights Division and the voting rights section in particular. The section, which is charged with protecting the voting rights of minorities, has seen a dramatic drain in African-American staff over the past few years. And a number of those who have remained have alleged discrimination -- according to a knowledgable source, at least two African-American employees have filed Equal Employment Opportunity complaints against their supervisors, claiming they've routinely been passed over for promotions given to white staff.

Carl Goldman, executive director of AFSCME's Council 26, the union that represents non-attorney staff in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, told me that he frequently hears similar complaints:

“When I ask our members in the Civil Rights Division what’s their biggest problem, their answer is discrimination.... They tell me stories about minority employees being continually passed over for jobs that are given to white employees. They talk about disrespect from managers. They talk about explicitly racist comments that are made by attorneys, the same attorneys that have been brought in by the Republican political appointees that run .

"While there are serious problems throughout the Civil Rights Division," Goldman said, "the worst offender is the voting section.”

Over the past two years, there's been a continual drain of African-American attorneys from the section. Six African-American attorneys have left; there are currently only two out of a total of approximately thirty-five, estimates Joe Rich, the former chief of the voting section.

FULL story at link.