$625G bias slap

B’klyn construction firm payout to 6 black workers

AT ONE Brooklyn construction site, the white foreman openly berated African-American workers with racial slurs. At a Midtown site, workplace bathrooms were segregated by race.

All of that will result in a $625,000 payment to the workers in a settlement between the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and one of the city’s biggest contractors, the Brooklynbased Laquila Group, it was announced Monday.

The EEOC had charged in a lawsuit filed against Laquila that six African-American workers were routinely called “monkey,” “gorilla” and the N-word at two Laquila job sites over the past few years.

At the site of a luxury apartment building under construction in downtown Brooklyn, a foreman named Angelo Sicchio subjected laborer Walter Franks to multiple racial slurs on nearly a daily basis.

He called Franks “Green Mile” after a slow-witted fictional character in a movie, and called another worker with dreadlocks “mophead,” according to the EEOC.

After Franks and other workers reported Sicchio’s behavior to his supervisor, Jeff Glennon, Sicchio continued the harassment, according to the EEOC.

The increasing friction ended in February 2014 when Laquila terminated Franks, a move Franks said was retaliation for his filing a complaint.

“The construction industry has remained one of the few bastions of blatant and open racism in the workplace,” said Charles Coleman, senior EEOC trial attorney. “The attempts to humiliate these courageous claimants are shameful, and even after Laquila was on notice of its behavior, they allowed for this disrespect to continue.”

At another Laquila job site, the construction of a new Museum of Modern Art building on W. 53rd St., ironworker Nathan Darby, 49, said Sicchio made his racial animus evident in a different way while he was on the job in 2015.

“He was making a real uncomfortable situation for all the minorities working on the job,” Darby said, recalling that somebody put a stuffed monkey in the bathroom with some bananas.

When Darby confronted Sicchio, “His reply was, ‘That’s the bathroom over there for you guys.’ You’re not entitled to use any other bathrooms.’ When I asked him who he was referring to, he said, ‘Who do you think I’m talking about? You’re not using the bathrooms used by my people.’ ”

Darby said Sicchio was very open about his racial bias, openly using the N-word to refer to African-American workers.

“I feel I was treated like s--t. It was a really bad, hostile environment,” he said. “It shows racism is still around.”

After Franks brought his complaints to the EEOC, the agency did an investigation and found the five other workers who’d experienced race bias at the two job sites.

The EEOC attempted to mediate a settlement through its conciliation process, but wound up filing suit in September 2016. The settlement was reached Friday and announced late Monday.

Sicchio could not be reached for comment.

When a Daily News reporter called up Laquila’s East Flatbush office, an employee who refused to give her name said, “No comment” and hung up.