Turner CEO: ‘We’re all responsible’ for stopping workplace hate

It’s been a difficult issue for the construction industry: Hangman’s nooses, a symbol of hate synonymous with the history of black lynching in the US, are appearing on job sites. Their occurrence has become so common that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has a data category that tracks complaints about them.

Perhaps nowhere did the problem receive more attention than at an Amazon fulfillment center job site in 2021, when workers discovered as many as eight ties throughout the project over several weeks.

now, these workers have sued Amazonalong with Fairfield, New Jersey-based general contractor RC Andersen and Holliston, Mass.-based Wayne J. Griffin Electric, saying the companies didn’t do enough to prevent the ties from appearing.

In response, an Amazon spokesperson told Construction Dive: “Hate, racism and discrimination have no place in our society and are not tolerated anywhere associated with Amazon, whether under construction or fully operational. Due to active legal proceedings, we have no further comment at this time.” RC Andersen and Griffin did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

CEOs intervene

While the lawsuit is still in litigation, two prominent industry CEOs told Construction Dive that owners and contractors should ultimately be responsible for preventing hate symbols from appearing on job sites .

“We’re all responsible,” said Peter Davoren, CEO of New York-based Turner Construction, the nation’s largest contractor by revenue. “An owner delegates the site to the construction manager. It’s still the owner’s place, but it’s kind of an unconditional trust.”

Davoren has been outspoken on the subject of events motivated by prejudice in the workplace and personally visit projects as they occur. His company also stops work at sites when hateful graffiti or ties appear to discuss the importance of fostering an inclusive workplace environment.

The company recently shut down a job in San Diego after biased graffiti appeared in the bathroom three times in one week.

“We’re training the 700 people that are on the job,” Davoren said. “The owners are fully supportive, but if we’re delayed, we pay the cost. We’ve done it before.”

Deryl McKissack, CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based construction management firm McKissack & McKissack, said that if contractors and owners know about bias-motivated events taking place on job sites and don’t take measures to stop them, they should be responsible.

“It’s when you’re warned and you don’t do anything that you become responsible or you become a part of what’s going on,” McKissack said.

In their lawsuit, the workers pointed to the appearance of a bow at another Amazon job site where the same contractors worked in 2017 and argued that the event should have notified the companies that they had to do more in the future.

The CEOs spoke to Construction Dive earlier Construction Inclusion Weekwhich takes place from 16 to 20 October and aims to eliminate hate in the workplace.

A personal legacy

For McKissack, whose great-grandfather started a construction company after being freed from slavery after the Civil War, the appearance of ties in workplaces is especially important.

“It’s very painful,” he said.

At the same time, she emphasized that the display of physical ties was really just the embodiment of the institutional racism she has encountered as a black woman in the construction industry throughout her career.

“These ties are no different than disrespect when I walk into an office space,” McKissack said. This lack of respect for her – she started her own construction company 30 years ago – is like “an invisible noose”, she said, which she has had to overcome repeatedly throughout her career.