The Georgia plant where General Mills makes cereal and trail mix is run by a “good ole boy” network of white men who have wrongfully demoted and hurled racist slurs at black workers for decades, eight current and former employees allege in a lawsuit filed this week in federal court.
The class action lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of Georgia in Atlanta, accuses General Mills of violating federal civil rights laws as well as state and federal laws designed to combat organized crime.
Specifically, the plaintiffs accuse white supervisors at the Covington plant of numerous racist acts they allegedly committed over two decades to punish and intimidate black employees. This includes an alleged incident in 1993 in which a rope was left on the desk of a black employee, the lawsuit says. In another case, the lawsuit alleges the word “coon” was written on a work form belonging to one of the plaintiffs.
“In the 1990s, white employees openly used the N-word and other racist slurs without fear of reprisal from management or human resources and attempted to intimidate black employees with racial hostility,” the lawsuit states.
General Mills executives never reprimanded their superiors for their racist behavior, the lawsuit says.
“Human Resources regularly informs racist white supervisors of the content of complaints against them, as well as the identity of the black employees who filed the complaint,” the complaint states. “This often results in retaliation against black employees.”
The Covington plant, which General Mills opened in 1988, produces Chex, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cocoa Puffs and Trix cereal.
General Mills declined to comment on the litigation. “General Mills has a long and ongoing commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, and we do not tolerate discrimination of any kind,” the company said in a statement.
Georgia attorney Douglas Dean, who represents the black employees, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Recent cases of alleged racial discrimination in the workplace have resulted in large legal settlements. In 2023, for example, fitness chain Equinox agreed to a $11.2 million settlement after a former black employee in New York accused a white male colleague of not accepting her as his boss.
Last year, a federal jury $3.2 million in damages awarded to a former black worker at a Tesla factory in California who claimed that there was rampant racial discrimination at the factory.
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Christopher J. Brooks
