Fired Haitian dishwashers at a South Beach hotel to get $2.5M after discrimination suit

[mia]

Four years ago, something bitter was brewing in the kitchens of the ritzy SLS South Beach hotel.

Seventeen of the Haitian dishwashers employed at the hotel’s restaurants, which included The Bazaar by Jose Andrés, Katsuya, and Hyde Beach, were banned from speaking Creole, while Hispanic colleagues were free to chat in Spanish, according to a discrimination lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Haitian workers were also asked to lug heavy items up the hotel’s 13 floors by stairs while other workers were spared.

When the Haitian workers asked managers to fix the hotel’s broken service elevator, one boss stated, “Let those slaves do the work.” The dishwashers reported the alleged abuse to human resources in April 2014. The entire dishwashing staff was then fired and replaced the same day with a staff “made up of almost entirely of white and/or Hispanic workers,” according to the lawsuit.

On Friday night, the hotel agreed to pay $2.5 million to the 17 people who were fired. It was a settlement to the suit that was filed in April 2017 by the federal employment agency....

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/tourism-cruises/article215764980.html

[malaise]

1. Get thee to the greatest page

Pay you racists - PAY!

[mia]

2. More: "As part of the settlement, the hotel will be required to run mandatory...

anti-discrimination training for all chefs, sous-chefs, managers, and hourly employees who work at the hotel’s restaurants, according to Carmen Manrara Cartaya, a trial attorney for the EEOC. These trainings are “designed to prevent what happened to those Haitian workers to happen to anyone else again,” Weisberg said."

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/tourism-cruises/article215764980.html

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

3. Why am I not surprised. In Puerto Rico we look down on the Dominicans. In the

Dominican Republic they look down on the Haitians. The Haitians then don't have anyone to look down on.

[mia]

4. "When the #Haitian workers asked managers to fix the hotel's broken service elevator,

one boss stated, 'Let those slaves do the work."

Link to tweet