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Alabama and racism go together like peanut butter and jelly, but way less delicious.
A story that the Miami Herald reported details the racist abuse a Black cashier suffered at Jack’s Family Kitchen in Warrior, Alabama, a small city just north of Birmingham. Tevin Burrow filed a lawsuit against the restaurant chain and accused the franchise of firing him for calling out a toxic work environment.
The complaint details incidents of racism by both managers and employees in the group chat used to communicate schedule changes, etc. Burrow was employed at Jack’s from May to June 2023 where he allegedly witnessed employees using racist slurs in front of customers, posting Nazi imagery, swastikas and commentary in the group chat. Burrow says that when he complained about the environment, he was told by a general manager to “let it go.”
After contacting the human resources department about the racist culture of the restaurant, Burrow was fired. He was given the excuse that he had used profane language in front of a customer while arguing with an assistant manager. Let Burrow tell it; cursing in front of customers was “inconsistently enforced” at Jack’s.
“Although Jack’s maintains personnel policies that prohibit harassing language in the workplace, including racist language, the manager at the Jack’s restaurant failed to discipline an employee who flagrantly violated the policy,” Burrow’s attorney said.
NewsOne has exclusive deets on the case via an email sent by HKM Employment Attorneys LLP, the law firm that filed the suit this week in federal court in Birmingham, Alabama.
From HKM:
Later, Burrow logged into an online chat utilized by the manager and other employees for official scheduling purposes. Unfortunately, the chat was not limited to work-related information as several employees used it to display Nazi swastikas, the “White power” skull image and other white nationalist propaganda glorifying white supremacy and Nazi ideology.
When Burrow complained, his complaints were dismissed by the same general manager. The general manager, Trent Miller, had also posted comments joking about Hitler and telling Burrow that “HR doesn’t care what we do here as long as we make money.”
The complaint claims Burrow did ultimately contact Human Resources, but it took HR “a month to respond,” which, apparently, didn’t matter anyway because he was already terminated from his job “roughly a week after reaching out to HR.”
“No employee should have to learn to accept racist slurs and white supremacist rhetoric to keep their job,” HKM attorney Artur Davis said in a statement to NewsOne. “To this day, the manager who tolerated this kind of workplace appears to still be employed at Jack’s while my client was let go within a week of his complaint. Ninety-nine percent of the people who spend money at Jack’s would expect better.”
For the depression and humiliation that he endured, Burrow’s complaint is seeking compensatory damages, punitive damages, and returned losses of wages and benefits. We hope he gets everything he asks for and much more.
