Lockheed Pays Record Racial Bias Settlement

Lockheed Martin will pay a black worker $2.5 million to settle a racial discrimination suit in which Charles Daniels claims he was harassed for years at his job in Honolulu, and when he complained of it, the harassment escalated to death threats, the EEOC said. It’s the largest settlement the agency ever obtained for an individual claimant.     Racial threats at the workplace, including threats of lynching by hanging nooses, have increased markedly in recent years. The EEOC said it received nearly 7,000 complaints of racial harassment in the workplace in fiscal year 2007, up from 3,268 such complaints in FY 1990.     Daniels sued Lockheed in 2005 in Honolulu Federal Court. The EEOC said the company refused to discipline his harassers. But Lockheed officials told The Wall Street Journal that the harassers have all been fired, or have quit, or will be fired, and that they will be barred from working for Lockheed again.