Discrimination at Ford Aerospace Alleged : Fired Worker Gets $1 Million in Bias Suit

A former Ford Aerospace worker who claimed he was harassed, discriminated against and eventually fired because he is black has been awarded more than $1 million by a Superior Court jury.

Carl Roberts was a computer technical adviser for Ford Aerospace in the company’s satellite tracking division at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Roberts, who worked for Ford for seven years, said he hopes that Monday’s verdict will be a signal to other firms that discriminate.

“I hope this makes other companies think twice before they subject employees to harassment because of their race,” said Roberts, 52, a software engineer for Lockheed Technical Operations Co. in Sunnyvale. “And I hope Ford and other companies will develop better methods of evaluating employees than relying on some good old boy network.”

A spokesman for Ford Aerospace, a subsidiary of Ford Motor Co., said the firm is reviewing the case to determine whether to appeal the $1,045,000 judgment, but declined further comment.

Before being hired by Ford, Roberts worked for Lockheed at Vandenberg for 13 years and received excellent job ratings from his supervisors, according to court records.

In 1976, the contract at the base satellite tracking division was awarded to Ford Aerospace. Roberts left Lockheed to work for Ford.

“In the late 1970s the contract was expanded, more people were hired by Ford, and the atmosphere began to get negative,” Roberts said. People used racial epithets, he said, and told racial jokes “loud enough so I could hear them.”

Roberts’ job was to retrieve information from satellites. He said some co-workers interfered with his communication system, played pranks on him while he was trying to work and harassed him to make his job more difficult.

Roberts’ supervisors ignored his problems, he said. He filed complaints with state and federal agencies.

“After he filed the complaints, things got much worse for him,” said Marilyn Gilbert, co-counsel along with the Santa Barbara Legal Defense Center. “They prevented him from being promoted, locked him out of briefing sessions, removed him from training, stopped his merit increases. He ended up being the lowest-paid person in his section.”

Ford stated it had fired Roberts because “his overall performance was considered to be unsatisfactory,” according to court records.