Chevron Allows Supervisor to Call Employee "Stupid Jap"

OK, this is a little off-topic, but probably of interest to anyone reading this blog.  Way down at the bottom of this nasty report of how Chevron allows their supervisors to racially harass their employees, is the name and address of the person you should write to if you're so moved - I know I am.  The following is a post from Foundasian.org and comes from a press release forwarded to that blog by Richard Wada:

http://foundasian.org/2010/02/chevron-allows-supervisor-to-harass-employee-with-stupid-jap-slur/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Chevron Allows Supervisor to Harass Employee with ‘Stupid Jap’ Slur

February 21, 2010
In: community, law, people
Chevron Corporation’s multi-million dollar “Human Energy” advertising campaign touts how much Chevron values people. Chevron’s website promotes the “Chevron Way” – the company’s commitment to complying with the law and placing “the highest priority on the health and safety of our workforce.”

The reality for John Suzuki, who worked at Chevron for over 35 years, was much different. An award-winning patent liaison in Chevron’s Law Department in Richmond, Calif., Suzuki was forced to take early retirement this month rather than risk his health by returning to work under a supervisor who harassed and threatened him, and called him a “stupid Jap.”

Suzuki wanted to continue working at Chevron, but the company refused his doctors’ directives that he must be moved to a different department or else he would be at high risk of having a heart attack.

“Stupid Jap” Slur
The doctors had diagnosed Suzuki as being at high risk of another heart attack after he had at least two episodes of severe chest pains following incidents in which his supervisor, Alan Klaassen harassed him by yelling at him, making false accusations and threatening him.

After one such incident in January 2008, Suzuki went to his doctor, who told him that he had to reduce his workload or else he might have a heart attack. When Suzuki told Klaassen and a manager, Frank Turner, what his doctor said, Klaassen and Turner laughed at Suzuki.

Things came to a head in August 2009 when Klaassen again yelled at Suzuki, waved his fist in his face, threatened him and falsely blamed him for problems in the work. Klaassen also called Suzuki a “stupid Jap.”

Use of racial slurs by supervisors on the job violates federal and state anti-discrimination laws and laws prohibiting hostile and abusive work environments. As one federal appeals court noted in 1993, “Perhaps no single act can more quickly ‘alter the conditions of employment and create an abusive working environment’ . . . than the use of an [unambiguous] racial epithet . . . by a supervisor….”

Following the August 2009 incident, Suzuki again suffered severe chest pains. His doctors put him on medical leave and have been treating him since then. They told Chevron that he could return to work only when he was taken out of his hostile work environment and moved to a different department.

Chevron categorically refused to consider moving Suzuki to a different department. If Suzuki did not return to his department and his supervisor Klaassen, he faced termination, Chevron told him.

Suzuki got an attorney, John Ota of Alameda, Calif., who pointed out to Chevron that under California law, the company must separate Suzuki from Klaassen, at the very least until Chevron did a fair and thorough investigation of Suzuki’s charges that Klaassen had insulted him with a racial epithet and otherwise created a hostile work environment.

Investigation or Cover-up?
Demanding that Suzuki return to work under Klaassen before Chevron had even investigated the matter assumed that Klaassen would be cleared, Ota noted, an indication that Chevron had no intention of conducting a fair and objective investigation as required by law.

Chevron refused to budge. Faced with termination and the possible resulting loss of his retirement benefits, Suzuki reluctantly chose early retirement on February 1.

Meanwhile, Japanese American and Asian American organizations, disturbed about Suzuki’s situation, began contacting Chevron to express their concerns.

Richard Konda, Executive Director of Asian Law Alliance in San Jose wrote Chevron on January 12, stating that it was “highly inappropriate and insensitive” for Chevron to demand that Suzuki return to work under Klaassen before completing its investigation.

Patty Wada, Regional Director of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) Northern California-Western Nevada-Pacific District, said in a January 22 letter that she was appalled to hear that Suzuki had been subjected to racial slurs by his supervisor.

Under pressure, Chevron hired an outside Japanese American attorney, Susan Kumagai, to investigate Suzuki’s charges. On her website, Kumagai describes herself as a specialist in “representing management” against discrimination charges.

Suzuki asked Kumagai and Chevron how many such investigations Kumagai had done in the past and in how many of those investigations, if any, she had concluded that a hostile work environment existed. Neither Kumagai nor Chevron responded to these questions.

Not surprisingly, Kumagai conducted a quick investigation and concluded that none of Suzuki’s charges could be substantiated. Chevron informed Suzuki of these results on February 16, but refused to provide him with a copy of Kumagai’s report.

In her hasty effort, Kumagai failed to even talk to some witnesses Suzuki said could confirm that he told them about Klaassen’s racial slur soon after it happened. Because in this, as in many other harassment cases, there were no witnesses to the actual harassment, such corroborating witnesses are often crucial to verifying the victim’s account of what happened.

The failure to interview corroborating witnesses, hiring as the investigator an attorney who defends management for a living, and Chevron’s refusal to provide Suzuki with a copy of the investigation report – these are all “signs pointing to a cover-up,” not a fair and objective investigation, says Ota.

Letter Writing Efforts
Suzuki is continuing to ask organizations to write Chevron on his behalf. What is important to him, he says, is “the principle of the matter – racial remarks like this cannot be tolerated.”

The points he wants organizations to make in their letters to Chevron are first, that Chevron conduct a fair and thorough investigation of his charges, an investigation by someone who has a history of doing evenhanded investigations, not by a management defense attorney.

Second, Suzuki wants Chevron to provide him with Kumagai’s investigation report, and also to provide the report when a fair and thorough investigation is completed.

Last, Suzuki asks that Chevron fire Klaassen if it finds that Klaassen did call Suzuki a “stupid Jap” and that Suzuki be allowed to return to work at Chevron in a different department.

Leaders of Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress (NCRR) in Los Angeles wrote to Chevron on February 10. Paul Osaki, Executive Director of the Japanese Community and Cultural Center of Northern California sent Chevron a letter on February 19.

Other organizations in Los Angeles, San Jose and San Francisco have also agreed to write to Chevron.

Those interested in contacting Chevron should write to: John S. Watson, Chief Executive Officer, Chevron Corp., 6001 Bollinger Canyon Road, San Ramon, CA 94583.

Samah Tawhid

Samah Tawhid is a graduate university student and teacher in Cairo who is writing a thesis on John Okada's No-No Boy and came upon our production on the Internet and wrote to me via the email contact on our web page.  We had an interesting exchange and I mentioned the fact that some of the earliest and most passionate voices after 9/11 were Japanese Americans urging our leaders to speak out against racial profiling and violence against Arab Americans and Muslim Americans.  She wrote back that she had gone to the American University in Cairo and watched Yuri Kochiyama's interview in which she spoke out against this kind of fear-based, vengeance based racial discrimination.  She sent this passage from the Quran:


الْحُجُرَاتِ: 13 [


“O mankind! Lo! We have created you a male and a female, and have made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know one another (not that ye may despise each other). Lo! the noblest of you, in the sight of Allah, is the best in conduct. Lo! Allah is Knower, Aware".

(al-Hujuraat,13)
From
The Meaning of the Glorious Quran
Interpreted by
Muhammed Marmaduke Pickthall

I have worried about everything I've written. Of course, there are the regular, pedestrian worries - "Does this suck? Do I suck?" - but there are always worries specific to the things we write. I had a ball writing GHOSTS AND BAGGAGE, but when it came time to produce it, I worried "What will my parents think?" The male character was pretty pissed off at his father, who was safely dead, though my own father wasn't and surely recognized some of the arguments. I also worried "What will my in-laws think?" (I had my wife Sharon engaging in various acts of simulated sex onstage just a few feet away from them), and what was once a gleefully liberating sexual romp in my head became "What was I THINKING of?" when a production became imminent.

I worried less about THE MIKADO PROJECT, because I had a brilliant co-writer named Dorie Baizley with whom to share the blame, though as we got closer to opening, I began to worry if people would recognize their own characters (one of whom was not intended to be based on anyone, though the actor somehow channeled a very specific figure whom he didn't even know) and, of course, I worried that I had gotten in way over my head in teaming up to write a musical, a form about which I know so little.

I SHOULD HAVE worried more about INNOCENT WHEN YOU DREAM, which drew quite a bit from a week spent in a hospital with my dying father and my three sisters. Written in stages over the course of a number of years, it went through many drafts, and I was mostly preoccupied with the entirely invented part of the story and had disguised the part that was a little closer to my own family's experience. Strangely enough, after much cutting and pasting and rearranging and more cutting, what we ended up with in the hospital scenes were moments amazingly close to what had actually happened. The central conflict between the siblings was invented, as were some more humorous aspects of their characters, but the dialogue that remained was at times verbatim, which I only realized when I found myself saying the words onstage just a few feet away from my sisters, whose collective mouths were often literally hanging open during the performance.

I've written another play, dashed off in 48 hours, that's like a crazy doodle from an unfettered id, and my daughter Rosie started to read it before putting it down, disturbed: "How does Daddy KNOW these things?" she asked Sharon.

Lots to worry about whenever one sits down to write, right?

So what's to worry about NO NO BOY?

A lot of people have held the film rights at one point or another and many have thrown up their hands: It's very much a novel and as such, it resists adaptation. There are some factual problems, some that cut to the very core of the main character's dilemma (probably unknown to John Okada), that have to be fixed and corrected in a way that doesn't feel like so much exposition, but the most worrisome aspect of this adaptation is the fact that the novel has had such an impact on so many people - the raw anger and despair contained within is so different from most Nikkei literature, as are its many damaged characters. More than one person has told me that the book changed them in some measurable fashion, and I feel the same way about it - I was a different person after I read it than I was before. Everyone has had the experience of seeing an adaptation of a beloved book only to be outraged by how badly it got screwed up. Greater minds than mine have already grappled with this seminal novel, so what makes me think I can do it justice?

Many writers have said that the only reason to write is because one has to. And that's how I feel about NO NO BOY. I was shocked some years back when my father, as part of the Seattle Nisei Veterans, participated in a protest against a JACL proposal to apologize to the No No boys: He was angry; he felt that the Sanseis were turning them into heroes when he and many of his veteran friends felt that the draft resistors and the No No boys had, in fact, undermined the sacrifices made by their fallen comrades. I argued that I felt that ALL of the responses that the Nisei had to their injustice contributed to the better lives that we had growing up - the fact that they took different paths and were in opposition to each other ultimately did not matter in the end: The veterans proved their loyalty and by extension, the loyalty of all Japanese Americans, while the draft resistors and No No boys helped spotlight the fact that the Japanese Americans had gotten a seriously raw deal, one worth risking prison and ostracism for. Our conversation ended in anger, though a short time later, my father, in a rare reversal for him, said that after thinking about it, he agreed that ultimately, everyone who followed their conscience helped to undo the injustice done to them all.

In re-examining John Okada's NO NO BOY, I think he really captured that maelstrom of feeling and that is what I've tried to focus on in this adaptation. These were young people who had all just undergone gutwrenching and head-spinning experiences and Okada captures them as they try to put their lives back together when they still don't quite know how. The community is split and though some people are moving forward, others are not. It's my hope that our play will help to shine a light on that time and provide a larger perspective for everyone who sees it. It's also my hope that the play will bring new readers to the original book and remind other readers why that book so moved them in the first place.

I'll wait to worry about what people think on Opening Night when it'll be too late to do anything about it.