A Black engineer working for a New Jersey power plant has filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming he was discriminated against due to his race and perceived sexual orientation.<\/p>\n
Steffon Josey, 35, of Somerset, states in court papers he was ridiculed for having facial tattoos, called \u201cgay\u201d and found a noose hanging in a building where he was working.<\/p>\n
A representative of Bergen Generating Station and its parent company, Consolidated Asset Management Services, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
Josey was hired as a control room operating engineer for Bergen Generating Station in Ridgefield on Nov. 14, 2023, but says his co-workers refused to train him.<\/p>\n
\u201cMeanwhile, a white employee who was hired alongside plaintiff was trained by plaintiff\u2019s co-workers,\u201d states the lawsuit, filed last summer in Somerset County Superior Court.<\/p>\n
The suit says Josey was also denied overtime opportunities.<\/p>\n
In January 2024, Josey was in a break room watching the news when a report of a shooting arrest came on the television. The shooter had visible tattoos, the suit says.<\/p>\n
He claims a co-worker, who was also in the break room, saw images of the shooter on TV, then looked at Josey and said, \u201cWhat the f— is on your head?\u201d<\/p>\n
Josey, who has head and face tattoos, became uncomfortable by the remark, and felt \u201cas if he was being compared to the criminal on the news,\u201d the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n
In another incident, a control-room operator wearing a \u201cChoose Violence\u201d T-shirt used a derogatory remark about a lack of intelligence to describe newly hired workers at the power plant.<\/p>\n
Additionally, Josey claims he was screamed at by a supervisor over a faulty computer screen and called \u201cgay\u201d by a co-worker who objected to his making maple syrup bacon. <\/p>\n
On Sept. 25, 2024, Josey said he found a noose hanging in a building where steam turbine generator units are installed.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit claims Josey tried to complain about the noose and other incidents during a staff meeting but was told, \u201cNo, they (upper-level managers) don\u2019t want to hear it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Josey then filed a complaint with a human resources representative. <\/p>\n
After the complaint was received, the business began to implement training to deal with discrimination and retaliation in the workplace, the suit says.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, the damage was done as plaintiff was already subjected to discrimination in the workplace,\u201d the suit says.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit claims violations of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination due to race and perceived sexual orientation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Black engineer working for a New Jersey power plant has filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-125261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}