Baking Giant Gonnella Settles Racial Discrimination Lawsuit By Paying Employee $30K

Gonnella Baking Co., an established bread and rolls manufacturer for more than a century now, will pay an employee $30,000 after he filed a lawsuit against the company claiming he was subjected to racial harassment in the workplace.

Paul Belton, who’s a black man, said Gonnella failed to respond to the first discrimination charge he filed against the company in 2014, the Chicago Business Journal reported. The U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission filed the second lawsuit for him, claiming his co-workers made racially charged comments about him at work and that Gonnella violated federal law by ignoring his complaints.

The EEOC said these comments included referring to black employees as “you people” and saying things like “Black people are lazy” and “I better watch my wallet around you.”

Gonnella, which is now based out of Downers Grove, is settling the lawsuit with the $30,000 and company-wide “civility” training, the Journal reported. The company agreed to the training for all of the workers at its Aurora plant. According to the Journal, Gonnella will also have to make preventing harassment a factor in determining pay for company managers.

“Racial harassment is not limited to explicit racial slurs, and can include any offensive conduct directed toward an employee because of his race,” Julianna Bowman, EOCC’s Chicago District director, said in a statement. “Requiring an employee to endure persistent references to offensive racial stereotypes or jokes in the workplace is a violation of the law.”

The settlement was agreed upon Monday in court, when a consent decree was entered by U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Cox and signed by EEOC officials and Gonnella President Nicholas Marcucci.

The terms of the settlement did not include any kind of admission of guilt on behalf of Gonnella.

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