Petition: Investigate Non-union Alcatraz Cruises for ignoring rampant racial discrimination among its employees.

Petition: Investigate Non-union Alcatraz Cruises for ignoring rampant racial discrimination among its employees.

A former employee of Alcatraz Cruises recently created this petition.
On Behalf Of Samantha Levens
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2013 5:07 PM

Please share it with your union/organization's membership lists, re-post to facebook, online etc:

http://www.change.org/petitions/national-parks-service-investigate-alcat...

As we all know this is not an isolated incident. This is the same company that fired 2 union organizers, one for supposedly "acting too gay". Please sign the petition and share it on Facebook, by email and on websites in order help this former employee as well as further expose Alcatraz Cruises' unfair, discriminatory and illegal treatment of their employees.
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Petition to National Parks Service

National Parks Service: Investigate Alcatraz Cruises for ignoring rampant racial discrimination among its employees.

http://www.change.org/petitions/national-parks-service-investigate-alcat...

My name is Ayoe and for the past four years, until I resigned in frustration, at the Pier 33 landing I worked as a member of the Guest Services/ Security team at Alcatraz Cruises in SF, a subsidiary of Hornblower Cruises, owned by CEO Terry MacRae. In that period of time I was subjected to easily over twenty instances of rampant discriminatory conduct, threats, unequal advancement opportunities and frequent racial epithets and insults online and in person, in particular the N-word, by several of my direct supervisors, one of whom was subsequently promoted twice to a managerial position.

When I reported it to the Human Resources Director I was told that I must have encouraged it, and somehow it must have been my fault, and as punishment for stepping forward to make this report, I was given a bad annual performance review in spite of twice being Employee of the Quarter, the most experienced member of the team, tri-lingual, and being the current winner of the company's annual international Hornblower Q2 award (voted on by the guests). In retaliation, I was denied several well-deserved and overdue promotions and informed that the prize for the Q2 award, a cruise for two, would expire two months after it was awarded, even though the company knew I had already booked my vacation for that time period. By contrast the winner of the award the previous year was allowed to extend the deadline by over a year.

Every department in the company is seriously plagued by the most horrible instances of racial prejudice. In the history of the entire company's supervisorial and managerial staff there has been only one manager and no supervisors who are African-American. The Marine Ops Department has notoriously excluded African-Americans since the company's inception and when I asked why, I was told, "it's not your thing", as if those positions were traditionally reserved for only a certain race.

Senior officials of the company are entrenched in a pattern of favoritism towards Caucasians and prejudicial treatment against African-Americans to the point where African-Americans are fired for the least infraction such as 'not being as fluent as expected in the English language' or not having the proper attitude towards guests, (my favorite was the African-American employee that was written up and subsequently terminated because he had a Seattle Supersonics baseball hat on during his break time); conversely there are reported and documented cases of certain Caucasian employees threatening to come to the company premises and shoot people, physically intimidating guests and being intoxicated while on duty, in addition to other serious infractions, that are still allowed to continue working there with only a slap on the wrist- if that.

After resigning myself mentally to absorbing this treatment, I finally resigned myself physically, and removed myself from the environment altogether. While I have been advised to pursue legal action against the company, I feel that resolving the case of racism against one individual (in this case me) is the easy part.

Thoroughly overturning, reorganizing and reversing this entrenched pattern of hatred and illegal preferential treatment at Alcatraz Cruises will require the efforts of a wider community and the glare of a national spotlight so I am asking the National Parks Service, and in effect, the Federal Government to look into this and take appropriate action. In the event that Alacatraz Cruises refuses, as they have, thus far, to reverse these racist policies and hateful practices, the National Parks Service should not renew their contract which expires on September 27, 2015. Thank you all for your support.