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2/4/2008 – CINCINNATI - Lawyers for 23 black workers at the Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. bottling plant in Madisonville have filed another racial harassment lawsuit against the Atlanta-based company, alleging that it continues to maintain a "hostile, intimidating, offensive, and abusive workplace environment" more than six years after a related class-action complaint was filed. The new lawsuit comes just weeks after another involving similar allegations against Coke was settled on the eve of trial.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Sandra Beckwith earlier had rejected Coke's request that that case be dismissed without trial and said the determination of whether there was a hostile environment should be made by a jury. Coke had argued that the incidents were not severe or pervasive enough to qualify as a hostile working environment.

The workers have been forced to bring additional individual lawsuits because Coke has opposed resolving the matters in a class action and was successful in having a 2001 class-action complaint decertified, he said. That matter is now being appealed in the Hamilton County Court of Appeals.

Randy Freking, an attorney with the plantiffs' firm of Freking & Betz LLC, said harassment of black workers hasn't stopped and that Coke's response to workers' complaints of racial harassment by supervisors and co-workers remains ineffective.

"The conduct is continuing. ... I have not seen any change, because I've seen alleged investigations that they've done that are just sham investigations," Freking said. "Coke investigates itself and believes what the managers tell them. There's been no change in their conduct of the investigations, and that's been the problem all along."

The latest workers' lawsuit was filed Jan. 25 in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati. It describes racial slurs and graffiti laced with the word "n----r" (sic) and racial stereotypes to which the "plaintiffs and African-American co-workers" have allegedly been subjected throughout their employment at the plant. "In some instances, racially offensive graffiti, including 'n----r' (sic), remained visible for months or even years. ... In 2004, a noose was placed on the back of plaintiff Calvin Ward's forklift," it states.

Other detailed allegations include an instance in which a white supervisor threatened one of the plaintiffs with a knife and another plaintiff who was "verbally accosted by a Caucasian co-worker for testifying about being subjected to racial slurs" in the other lawsuit that was settled in November.