A state Civil Rights investigation has preliminarily found that Capital Health supervisors failed to adequately respond to a Black employee’s complaints of racial slurs and stereotypes, including a coworker using the n-word.
The alleged comments occurred at a billing office in Lawrence in 2019, and were only partially addressed after the employee who first complained sent an email to a company vice president two months later, the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights alleges in a finding of probable cause in the case.
And, the company failed to get a “better understanding” of the broader implications of the complaints of a hostile workplace, the finding says.
The finding is not final, but finds reasonable suspicion the company violated the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination.
Capital Health, which operates two hospitals and a sizable outpatient center in Mercer County, as well as over a dozen healthcare centers and offices, including in Burlington and Bucks (Pennsylvania) counties, said it could not comment on the specific case, since it’s ongoing.
The company says it remains committed to addressing behavior inconsistent with its values and “offering a workplace that provides respect for both our employees and patients, and that leaves no room for discriminatory or racially inflammatory language or actions.”
The Civil Rights division, a unit of the Attorney General’s office, learned of the employee’s allegations via a November 2020 complaint she filed with the division, alleging she was subjected to a hostile work environment in 2019, and was fired later that year for her complaints about it to superiors. She’d worked as a billing representative.
Through interviews with Capital employees, and their work records, the Civil Rights division declined to proceed with the allegation the employee was fired due to retaliation, since the employee’s past tardiness and PTO violations were well documented, the division said.
However, the division did find issue with the comments.
The investigation found the employee reported to a supervisor in June 2019 that a colleague made several stereotypical comments about Black people, and used the n-word in a conversation.
The employee who complained initially told her supervisor she did not wish to pursue a formal workplace action. Two months later, though, after another comment, the employee sent an email to Capital Health’s vice president of human resources and reported more “racial undertone conversations” and that she’d been experiencing them for about six months.
“It is very disturbing to come to work and have to ensure these types of discriminatory and racist/bias comments,” the employee wrote.
This time Capital Health acted, limitedly, the division says, by meeting with both employees and separating their work stations.
In its investigation, Civil Rights investigators found the coworker had indeed used the n-word, but told her bosses she did so only to illustrate how her own biracial son was being bullied by schoolmates’ racist language, and it was not directed at the employee who complained.
The employee who made the remarks had also expressed remorse and cried, saying, “I thought [the complainant] was my friend, we were having a friend conversation, I did not know I insulted her.”
The Civil Rights division says Capital Health took no action after the first report, and even after responding to the August 2019 email, “appears to have made no attempt to investigate or ‘gain a better understanding of’ either the August incident that triggered the email to Capital’s vice-president of human resources, or the complainant’s broader allegations of a hostile work environment observed over a period of months.”
Capital Health said that over the last several years, the company “has brought additional focus to issues of equity, diversity and inclusion, as well as a culture that empowers all employees to speak up and be heard when dealing with an issue that does not meet the organization’s expectations of behavior or safety.”
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Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com.
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When employee said colleague used the n-word, N.J. company was too slow to act, state says - NJ.com
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