Tagged: discriminatory organizational structure

Between 2000 and 2010, ZERO African American Agent Trainees were promoted to Agent at the New York office of William Morris.

can arbitration achieve Title VII’s public policy goal of ending workplace discrimination?

Litigation of employment discrimination claims generates several enforcement mechanisms that are integral to securing the end of workplace discrimination. First judicial decisions, which speak with the authority of the state, provide general deterrence of future violators. Second, the courts develop and refine the law of employment discrimination, establish precedents, and define a uniform standard. Finally, the judicial process educates the community and forms public values, a crucial undertaking when a law seeks to change public sentiment. Arbitration, because it is a nongovernmental, confidential, and final forum, does not generate these enforcement mechanisms; thus, it is less effective in achieving the public policy objective.

Source: Geraldine Szott Moohr. Arbitration and the Goals of Employment Discrimination Law. 56 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 395, 400 1999.

“Washington cannot cite to a stack of studies on discrimination that have nothing to do with WME and rely exclusively on them in claiming that WME has been engaged in a 100-year-old conspiracy to maintain white/Jewish dominance of the entertainment industry. To accept Washington’’s argument would be to endorse his racial and ethnic stereotyping and to permit a claimant to evade summary judgment based simply upon a generalized and inaccurate view of the entertainment industry and the talent agency workplace. Washington has admitted that WME never treated him differently because of his race; and his claim of disparate treatment fails for that reason alone.” — Michael Zweig of Loeb & Loeb LLP, November 20, 2013

If William Morris were truly innocent of Michael P. Zweig, Christian Carbone and Loeb & Loeb LLP’s criminal and unethical conduct, I think they would have a pretty strong claim for malpractice….

It’s funny to note that this statement was made in direct response to my following statement, in which they quote me in their Final Position Statement [pg. 8]:

Mr. Washington is not alleging that William Morris discriminated against him due to his race, color and/or perceived national origin. Based on the federal, state and city civil and human rights laws, the overwhelming amount of sociological and organizational research on the topic of discrimination in the workplace, and numerous articles published over the decades chronicling this issue of racism in Hollywood in magazines and newspapers including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Weekly and others, this is fact.

I said this in paragraph 172 of my COMPLAINT that was filed with the Southern District of New York on DECEMBER 21, 2010!! I knew then — “based on the federal, state and city civil and human rights laws, the overwhelming amount of sociological and organizational research on the topic of discrimination in the workplace, and numerous articles published over the decades chronicling this issue of racism in Hollywood….” that I uncovered between June and December 2010 — that my claims of pre and post-hiring individual disparate treatment due to my “race, color and/or perceived national origin” were a “fact.” I was not making an “alleg[ation]” against William Morris any longer (e.g. trying to discuss the issue with former COO Cara Stein and HR’s Carole Katz while employed, filing complaint with EEOC, etc.) and the additional evidence I’ve uncovered over the last three years since filing my complaint (e.g. “Exhibit 31” and the “on-going” conspiracy to conceal these “nigger” e-mails) further proves this is a fact — no matter what conclusion Gregory reaches on December 23, 2013.

work CULTURE as a SOURCE of DISCRIMINATION.

Culture is most useful for antidiscrimination discourse, in contrast, when it is understood more discretely as a process of developing shared meanings of experience through ongoing, day-to-day social interaction. In this sense, culture is largely a matter of micro social action and the relational or behavioral expectations that signal membership in a group. This social-relations meaning of culture is related to the more mainstream use in that it recognizes the power of culture to shape beliefs, expectations, and behavior, but it is also more definite in its understanding of culture as a dynamic process of social interaction and signaling that both constitutes and is constituted by the individuals who engage in it. This meaning also goes hand-in-hand with voluntary identity formation, while at the same time recognizing the bounded nature of choice. Culture, in other words, is a form of “‘impression management’: we act in a way that creates an impression in others that we are adhering to a set of values.”

and

How did these work cultures come to or, perhaps more importantly, why do they continue to define acceptable and favored behavior along a white, male norm? The answer to this question requires an understanding of both the human and structural dimensions of work culture. Work culture, as a human process of social interaction, is subject to a myriad of cognitive and motivational biases. At the same time, it is influenced by larger organizational context, left to flourish in work environments with little formal organizational structure, where white males are given the power to dominate and define.

Source: Tristin K. Green. Work Culture and Discrimination. 93 Cal. L. Rev. 623, 631, 647 2005.

EEOC v. Joe’s Stone Crab, Inc., 220 F.3d 1263 (11th Cir. August 4, 2000)

On June 8, 1993, the EEOC filed a complaint in the Southern District of Florida alleging that Joe’s violated Title VII through both intentional disparate treatment discrimination as well as unintentional disparate impact discrimination. The gravamen of the complaint centered around the EEOC’s findings with respect to Joe’s hiring and recruiting practices for food servers. The EEOC sought permanent injunctive relief, back pay, and prejudgment interest for qualified claimants. Over fifteen days interspersed from August 1996 to December 1996, the district court held a liability bench trial. The analysis at trial focused on two discrete time periods: first, the pre-EEOC charge period from 1986 to 1990; and finally, the post-EEOC charge period from 1991 to 1995.

and

In addition to its description of Joe’s hiring process,the district court also made several subsidiary findings relating to the historical operation of the roll call system. The district court observed that while “women have predominated as owner/managers,” “most of Joe’s female employees have worked in positions traditionally viewed as ‘women’s jobs,’ e.g., as cashiers or laundry workers. Food servers generally have been male.” Id.at 731. Although Joe’s hired female food servers during World War II, most of these positions “reverted to men at the conclusion of the war.” Id. Further, the district court found that, “[f]rom 1950 on, the food serving staff has been almost exclusively male. Indeed, one striking exception proves the rule. Dotty Malone worked as a food server at Joe’s for seventeen years, and for most of this time she was the lone female on a serving staff that ranged between twenty-four and thirty-two.” Id.

and

In explaining this historical dearth of female food servers, the district court found that Joe’s maintained an “Old World” European tradition, in which the highest level of food service is performed by men, in order to create an ambience of “fine dining” for its customers. Id.at 733.

(emphasis added) This is funny because Michael P. Zweig of Loeb & Loeb LLP has tried to argue throughout the entire arbitration proceeding that my claims are time barred or are in the alternative, limited to a 300 day statute of limitations. Zweig is intentionally misapplying the law for a number of reasons, but a big reason for why they are doing this, is because they cannot refute the pyramid of evidence I’ve presented establishing 115 year pattern and continuing practice of race-based employment discrimination and disparate impact to support that my race, color and/or national origin played a motivating factor in why I was not hired and/or promoted to Agent at the William Morris Agency (now known as William Morris Endeavor Entertainment) while working in the company’s New York office!!