WORKPLACE DIVERSITY : PROFILES :...

I have given presentations on our equal opportunity and harassment policies, where I discuss racial harassment and sexual harassment.

I recall one particular incident when I was talking about being careful about the words that you use. In our contract (with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers), there are provisions . . . . when a foreman is gone for a day or more, a person takes the foreman’s place. And that person is called the shadow. While I’m discussing the proper use of language in the workplace, one of the participants pipes up and asks “Does that mean we have to eliminate the use of the word shadow in our labor agreement?” The good thing for me--and I thought it spoke well of Southern California Edison management--(was that) I didn’t have to say anything. The manager jumped in and really read the riot act to his employee. To me, that was the biggest message out of this presentation--the manager saying that we’re not going to tolerate this. Everyone understands that if you call a black person a “nigger,” it’s a violation (of company policies). . . (But) people think it’s acceptable to tell a racial joke, engage in racial slurs if they think their buddy does not object.

One of the very first presentations I did, a foreman said, “I have a friend, he’s Latino, I call him ‘beaner’ and ‘wetback’ and he calls me ‘redneck’ and ‘honky’--and it’s just us two. What’s the harm in that?”

I developed a scenario with a lawsuit and an attorney to bring that point home.

The Latino, for whatever reason, has become disenchanted with the company. He’s now sued the company. The next thing you know there are Latinos in the jury box.

The lawyer, who was speaking so nicely to you in the depositions, is now looking at you with hate in his eyes and saying, “Isn’t it true that you called my client a ‘wetback’? Yes or no? Your honor, instruct the client to answer yes or no.”

“Did you call my client ‘wetback’?”

“Yes.”

“Did you call my client ‘beaner’?”

“Yes.”

What do I, as the Edison attorney, do? Get up and tell them, the jury, it was all a joke?

That’s something that brings the point home.

Our greatest interaction with other people typically comes in the workplace. You can choose where you shop, where you go to the movies, where you do things socially. You can kind of self-select the people you are going to be around. But at work, you are kind of thrown into a place where you are not selecting who is going to sit next to you.

But it’s important to get a job done--and it’s important to work well with other people, to work well with people from other cultures because, more and more, the workplace is reflecting the changing diversity of Southern California and elsewhere.