On May 4, 2023, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a lawsuit against wind turbine blade manufacturer LM Wind Power Blades, Inc., a General Electric affiliate in North Dakota, for subjecting an African American employee to a hostile work environment and retaliating against him when he complained.

The complaint alleges that the employee was the target of sustained racial hostility from white employees and supervisors, including racial slurs and threats of violence. Despite the employee’s frequent complaints, the company allegedly failed to discipline the harassers and instead allowed the abusive conditions to continue. Eventually, LM Wind Power fired the employee in retaliation for his complaints.

The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota as EEOC v. LM Wind Power Blades, Inc., Case No. 3:23-cv-00086 (D.N.D.). The EEOC seeks compensatory and punitive damages for the employee and an order directing the company to implement policies to provide equal employment opportunities for its employees.

How Traliant can help

HR Policies & Employee Handbook Service

Ensuring that an employee handbook is current and compliant presents a key challenge for many organizations. Employers must:

Develop a handbook that is compliant with federal and state laws in all jurisdictions where they have employees.
Monitor the law in all jurisdictions where they have employees and change their handbook as the laws change.
Ensure that employees acknowledge receipt of the handbook and revisions to it as it is updated.

Traliant’s Compliance Advisory Team can work with your organization to create a handbook that is both legally compliant and meets your company’s needs. Once the handbook is created and in use at your organization, we provide you with timely updates to its policies in response to changes in evolving federal and state law and help you assure that employees acknowledge receipt of the policies as the handbook change

Complete Harassment & EEO Compliance Program

To comply with federal guidelines and state laws, employers must ensure that all aspects of their harassment prevention program are fully compliant. With its in-house legal expertise, Traliant provides employers a complete workplace harassment prevention program with the following elements:

  • Employee Harassment Prevention Training
  • Harassment Policy, Notice, and Posting Compliance Service
  • Investigations Training and Investigative Services
  • Sensitivity Coaching

Unconscious Bias Training: Promoting a Diverse and Inclusive Workplace

Traliant’s interactive online training goes beyond detailing the benefits of a diverse and inclusive workplace to focus on practical steps that employees can take to help achieve this goal. Specifically, the course challenges learners to explore the nuances of unconscious and implicit biases, and how these biases can impact our judgements and decisions about others at work.

The unconscious bias training addresses a wide variety of hidden biases, such as those based on race, gender, religion, national origin, disability, age, and sexual orientation. The training also addresses biases based on a variety of personal characteristics such as height, weight, and attractiveness.

The training focuses on providing practical guidance that learners can implement immediately in their workplace to help reduce the impact of bias and promote a diverse and inclusive workplace.