“On two separate occasions, the manager yelled at interpreters (immigrant staff of color who are paid far less than other staff) in front of other staff for not doing their jobs properly.”
(IRC Staff Experience)
Towards the end of 2017, a coordinator in a US RAI International Rescue Committee (IRC) office anonymously reported their manager to IRC’s internal Ethics and Compliance Unit (ECU) with five staff incident statements regarding harassment, discrimination, and bullying. In their report, the coordinator gave examples of misconduct by the manager in community partner meetings where the manager swore at the coordinator and used degrading language towards them. Another incident involved the manager illegally changing the coordinator’s time card after the employee had submitted and signed their time card. The manager did not consult the employee and expressed unwillingness to pay them for overtime hours after the coordinator handled a late night emergency medical call from a client. The manager said the coordinator should have asked permission for overtime pay before the crisis, although appropriate channels as indicated by company policy were followed when the incident occurred.
After the murder of George Floyd, in a team meeting, the manager (who is white) told the team (primarily comprised of white staff, but also including non-US born staff members) that no one could experience racism or understand how hard it is to face racism the way the coordinator could because she is “a brown person” in the US. This comment was made without first discussing the situation with the coordinator, or gaining insight into her experiences, thus making her the poster brown person on the team. The manager then discussed that team members could ask the staff member about their experiences as a brown person, but not to do so in a way that indicated voyeurism. Other team members, some who were former refugees and immigrants, were crying because of the intense emotional state of the country. The manager didn’t acknowledge their feelings or lived experiences. The coordinator tried to interject to remind the manager that other staff on the team may also have personal experiences of racism in the US and that their lived experiences should also be acknowledged. The manager became frustrated with the coordinator for pointing out the discomfort the meeting caused and ended the meeting. The manager quickly pulled the coordinator into a 1:1 meeting and said the coordinator’s comments undermined the manager’s authority in the team and made her feel insecure. The manager started crying and said she was trying to bring unity to the team…white tears directed at a brown woman.
On two separate occasions, the manager yelled at interpreters (immigrant staff of color who are paid far less than other staff) in front of other staff for not doing their jobs properly. She frequently belittled them in front of staff and even began to scream at them if they made a mistake on their time cards. One interpreter cried after being yelled at and asked the coordinator for help learning how to submit their time card after the manager stormed out. The manager would frequently microaggress BIPOC staff members in comments or jokes such as “like this [staff member] because she’s brown” or “like this [staff member] because she speaks Arabic” or “oh, that’s because you’re of ___ racial background, just kidding”.
The manager would regularly speak negatively of certain staff members and managers to other staff on the team behind their backs. This included expletives, name calling, belittling and condescending language that pinpointed staff’s cultures, home lives and backgrounds. The manager also regularly walked through open office spaces to find staff and berate them. This was done with the manager standing, staff sitting, and no means of exit for staff. One of these times, the coordinator overheard the manager tell a staff member that they should learn to take better care of their children and should work on their marriage, or else they would not succeed at the job. The staff member, an immigrant who had specific cultural values around gender and household roles, started crying and spoke of wanting to end her life. During the COVID19 pandemic, staff members felt uncomfortable, unsure, and unsafe returning to in-person work at the office. Instead of valuing and validating staff concerns, the manager was insisting that staff needed to return to in-person work and blamed anyone expressing discomfort for influencing others on the team by being hesitant to return.
After years of working with the manager, the coordinator felt she couldn’t expand her program under the supervision of the manager and complained to the executive director (ED) at the time. The ED said if the coordinator wanted to expand her own program, she would have to work overtime and outside of work hours to get grants. The ED also said if the coordinator didn’t work well with the manager, she should leave and work somewhere else. The anonymous report made by the coordinator was not formally investigated by IRC’s internal ECU and instead routed to the ED. After reading it, the ED determined that the coordinator must have been the one to anonymously report the manager and confronted her about it. The ED said if the coordinator was not willing to name herself and come forward, then there wasn’t anything else the ED could do to resolve the situation with the manager. The coordinator declined naming herself, and the report went unaddressed.
