Ex-employee says store tolerated racist behavior
Martin Hopkins, fired in June after working nearly six years for the mobile phone operator, says he faced harassment at work, including slurs and seeing Confederate symbols.
A former Verizon Wireless employee says he endured a racially hostile environment for years at the company’s Lancaster store, where management permitted racial slurs and jokes and accommodated customers who refused to be served by a black man.
“They wouldn’t want to work with the (racial slur) or the ‘colored boy,’” Martin Hopkins said.
Instead of defending him, managers would ask him to go to another area of the store while a white salesperson handled the transaction, Hopkins said. He said a manager he had worked with had a Confederate flag tattooed on his chest.
“I didn’t want to be the only black guy in a place pulling the race card,” Hopkins said. But he said he sometimes tried to explain why certain comments and behavior were offensive. The response: “It was just, ‘Well, that’s the way it is in Lancaster.’” Hopkins said he was fired in June after nearly six years with Verizon despite receiving excellent performance reviews. He said he filed a discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission this month and is awaiting an interview.
A spokeswoman for the EEOC said the agency does not publicly discuss cases until or unless it files a lawsuit against the employer.
Verizon said it had not seen the complaint but the allegations described by The Dispatch are contradictory to company values. Spokesman Rich Young said Verizon embraces diversity and personal development “at every level” and already includes diversity and “unconscious bias” training for employees.
“We expect and demand that all of our employees are treated with integrity, dignity and respect, and we work hard to ensure that our work locations are free of harassment and discrimination,” Young said in a statement.
He said Verizon would not talk about Hopkins because it doesn’t comment on specific employee situations.
Hopkins, who is still job hunting, also said he had disagreed with company policy at times, and at one point more than two years ago began talking with some of his co-workers about the possibility of union representation. The effort did not result in organizing.
After his dismissal, Hopkins said he saw Instagram posts from Verizon Workers Rising, an employee-rights movement affiliated with the Communications Workers of America labor union.
The Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a statewide nonprofit group whose members include community groups, faith organizations and labor unions — including the Communications Workers of America — sent a letter to Verizon on Wednesday calling for the company to reinstate Hopkins and to conduct “implicit bias training” for managers and employees across the corporation.
“He’s not asking for a lot, really,” said Damareo Cooper, executive director of the Youngstown-based collaborative. “He’s asking that the company he worked for prevent this from happening to other employees.”
Cooper said the nation’s divisive political climate, “set from the highest positions of power,” is emboldening people on matters of race. Though many are speaking out about injustice, others seem increasingly comfortable sharing racist ideals, he said.
“Employees at a Verizon call center all the way in Texas have been speaking out about racist treatment from managers and the company’s decision to turn a blind eye,” Jane Phillips, a representative from the Communications Workers of America District 4, said in an emailed statement. She said Verizon should re-hire Hopkins and immediately implement companywide training.
Hopkins, a 34-year-old married father who lives on the South Side, said he initially wasn’t given a reason for his firing.
He said he was later contacted by a human relations representative and told he had been terminated due to an altercation with a colleague. Hopkins said the dispute arose because he argued that a customer had been improperly denied a credit.
Hopkins said he loved his relationships with loyal customers and stuck with Verizon because, “for every bad thing that happened, several good things happened.”
But after he was fired, Hopkins decided to speak out about his experience, which he said included regular use of racial epithets and tolerance of customers with Confederate symbols on their clothing and vehicles. He said he once complained to a manager that it was too hot in the store and was told, “Deal with it — you could be outside breaking rocks!”
Hopkins said he took that as a reference to black chain gangs. He said he doesn’t think white employees ever faced discipline for racial remarks, even after managers became aware.
As a student at Bishop Watterson High School in Clintonville, Hopkins said, he successfully fought for his right to wear his hair in braids. He said he’s long been accustomed to being one of relatively few minorities in academic and employment settings.
“I’ve picked my battles my entire life, from the braid thing in high school to standing up for my coworkers,” he said. “Verizon is a big company. But there’s a bigness in me that they’re going to see.”