Favoritism and racism

by Wilson
(Irvine, CA )

I work for this company for 8 months and I found that our site director and manager shows favoritism. On our team we have 9 African Americans, 3 White Americans and one Hispanic American. Well our boss which is Hispanic shows favoritism towards our co worker which is Hispanic and the white Americans. He has all of the African American help our coworker which is Hispanic to do his work while he comes in late daily. He constantly has to tell him to do his work and stay at his desk. But he continues to not stay at his desk. There are rumors that the reason why he does that is because our boss which is married is messing with the White American lady. She is young and fresh out of college and just now they promote her to go to another team cause our site leader knows her mom. Our boss put in a word for her to move to another team because he knows that if people find out it will get out. Which everybody knows already. He also had our co worker the Hispanic American to move to another team as well because of rumors that he makes too much money prior to his previous experience. And he know that our boss likes this girl. Now our boss is servicing another team which is the one that the White American lady is working at and we are left with half of him. Because he tells us that his manager the site leader said he needs to manage the other team. It sounds weird but they are keeping things quiet and it is bothering me. We are all temps except for one, she is quiet and to herself, she does not want to get involved cause she is afraid to lose her job. What shall be done? Could we take this to Human Resources.

Response from Carl: Thanks Wilson. First off, I'd be careful about spreading rumors like some of the ones you mention just in case they aren't true. You don't want to be the one caught spreading rumors especially if they happen to be false.

Could you take things to HR? Sure, if you feel you have something to complain about specific to your treatment. Mentioning some of the rumors that you refer to above may hurt your cause especially if you have no real proof. Whether or not going to HR helps you or not depends on what it is you're planning on telling them and what you're expecting them to do to make your situation better.

Having said that, you mention that you are a temp. How important is this job to you? I'm not sure what other options you have but if the job is one that could end at any time or in the near future since it's a temp job, how much is it worth fighting for? Only you can answer that question but I think it's worth considering.

Carl