Former Krupp employee Montrelle Reese meets with Rev. Jesse Jackson.
The outrage continues in response to Rahm’s embrace of ThyssenKrupp. Krupp plans on establishing a regional headquarters in Chicago.
ThyssenKrupp, a hundred year-old German company that made steel for Hitler’s army, has been charged with creating a hostile work environment for it’s Black employees.
Montrelle Reese said he “never felt more alone in my life” than he did during the two years he worked as a sales representative for the Westchester office of ThyssenKrupp Elevator.
It wasn’t just the frequent use of the n-word by his white supervisors and co-workers, the disparaging references to black neighborhoods that comprised Reese’s sales turf or even the blackface routine at a company meeting, he said.
It was the fact that a racially hostile work environment more prevalent in the 1960s was “part of the culture” at a German conglomerate that now wants to bring its North American regional headquarters to Chicago, Reese said.
Reese, who is African-American, worked at ThyssenKrupp Elevator from November 2007 until January 2010, before resigning because he said he could no longer tolerate the hostility.
On Monday, he talked to the Chicago Sun-Times about the allegations of abuse that prompted the Illinois Department of Human Rights to find “substantial evidence of discrimination” against the company that Mayor Rahm Emanuel proudly welcomed to Chicago last week.
Fred Klonsky 