Black workers sue, claiming White racists run a General Mills plant in Georgia

General Mills, the manufacturer of Cheerios and other well-known cereals, is being sued by eight Black employees working at a Georgia plant who say it’s rampant with racism under the control of its White managers.

In the federal lawsuit filed June 2, the employees accuse the managers at the Covington plant with favoring White employees for promotions over Black workers, issuing more disciplinary actions against Black employees and a manager calling them “colored,” a racist term.

The lawsuit points to two White managers who “formed an organization of white employees in management and human resources called the ‘Good Ole Boys’” favoring White workers over their Black counterparts and going back as far as the 1980s.

“The ‘Good Ole Boys’ believe that history and symbols that have been co-opted or misappropriated by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist hate groups are useful to keep Black people ‘in their place’ and discourage Black people from speaking or taking action against the disparate treatment of Black employees at the Covington facility,” according to the lawsuit.

In one example, a mural was displayed in the factory from 2005 to 2021 as a memorial for Confederate leaders using General Mills mascots, like the Cocoa Puffs cuckoo bird portraying the president of the confederacy, Jefferson Davis, and the Honey Nut Cheerios bee depicting General Stonewall Jackson, the lawsuit said.

In another instance, a Black employee said he found “KKK” etched into his lunchbox and the managers forced him to give a handwriting sample to prove it wasn’t him.

The Black employees said in the lawsuit that “egregious incidents of racism have gone ignored by local and corporate HR” for more than two decades and that the HR department would tell White supervisors about the complaints and reveal their names, resulting in retaliation.

General Mills said in a statement given to CNN that it doesn’t comment on pending litigation, adding that it “has a long-standing and ongoing commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and we do not tolerate discrimination of any kind.”

The company on its website said it prohibits discrimination and is a supporter of diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

The plaintiffs are seeking a trial by jury and compensatory and punitive damages for hundreds of Black employees who have worked at the Covington plant.