Two Sue Western Digital in Alleged Discrimination
Western Digital Corp. was sued Tuesday for race and sex discrimination and wrongful termination by two black former employees, including a manager whose photo appeared on the cover of a company employee manual describing the diversity of its work force.
The suit claims the company favored young white men during job cuts last year at its Irvine headquarters.
That downsizing also led to an age and sex discrimination suit filed in July 1996 by former executive Winifred Strohmeyer.
Strohmeyer claims her mistreatment prompted severe behavior problems in her teenage son, Jeremy. The Long Beach youth was arrested on murder and rape charges last May, 10 months after his mother’s suit was filed, in the slaying of a 7-year-old Los Angeles girl in a Nevada casino.
The latest suit was filed in Orange County Superior Court by Winifred Strohmeyer’s lawyer, Peggy Garrity, against the maker of computer data storage devices and three of its executives.
It seeks unspecified back pay, benefits and compensation for other losses; punitive damages for “outrageous” harassment and discrimination, and court orders forcing Western Digital to acknowledge wrongdoing and set up a training program to battle workplace discrimination.
Western Digital’s general counsel, Michael Cornelius, said he couldn’t address specific charges because he had yet to be served with the suit. But he said race, sex and age were never factors in the downsizing.
The plaintiff featured on the employee manual, Ronald Sinclair of Laguna Niguel, says he was exiled from his $80,000-a-year job as computer operations manager in August 1996 and assigned to work for an outside contractor at lower pay, benefits and duties.
The suit says he was paid less than similar white managers and was the only African American manager at Western Digital when he lost his job. The suit also said there were rumors that the company was “going to get the black guy.”
Sinclair also contends he was subjected to vulgar racial insults and jokes on the job and that Western Digital wrongly attempted to foreclose on a home loan it had provided him when he was first hired in 1990.
The other plaintiff is Rosalind Gulley of Fountain Valley, a senior financial analyst until her layoff in October 1996, six months after the main wave of layoffs in her department.
She contends Western Digital delayed her layoff and that of another woman to conceal the fact that a disproportionate number of minorities and women had lost their jobs in the downsizing.
It claims Gulley also fell victim to a “glass ceiling” policy of highly selective job postings that kept her from being considered for promotions.
Gulley and Sinclair are currently working for other employers for lower compensation, said Garrity, their attorney.
Strohmeyer’s lawsuit is scheduled to be heard beginning Feb. 2.
