ONE, a condom and lubricant company, is distributing the first and only condoms approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in anal sex. After the approval, ONE partnered with Walmart on new packaging to highlight the FDA clearance.
Walmart stores in the U.S. will exclusively carry the ONE Backdoor pack, a condom kit that is a “butt stuff approved” sampler of the different styles available from ONE.
The pack will feature products like the ONE Vanish, which is 25 percent thinner than the standard ONE condom. It works best with the ONE Move lube, according to the company. The ONE Super Sensitive line — thin, smooth condoms with 50 percent more lubricant — will also be included in the kit. Also included are different samples from the MyONE Custom Fit, which includes condoms of various sizes to accomodate appendages of different shapes and girth.
The Backdoor Pack’s Vanish and Sensitive condoms are sized via the company’s MyONE size method, which is based on popular purchasing habits and is slightly shorter and wider than a regular condom. The included FitKit measuring tool will also help buyers find their perfect cut.
Walmart will also carry 12-count packs of ONE Vanish and ONE Super Sensitive condoms, both with packaging that highlights “FDA cleared for anal use.”
The popular ONE Move silicone lube and the Oasis Silk lubricating lotion are also available in Walmart stores.
Don’t look for Salvation Army bell ringers outside your local Macy’s this holiday season.
The department store company didn’t renew its contract with the Salvation Army, a spokesperson told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “We reevaluated our cause and community work and made a significant commitment to driving societal change by empowering underrepresented youth in our community,” the spokesperson said. “With this shift, we made the difficult decision to not continue our partnership with the Salvation Army this holiday season.”
The Macy’s rep did not say explicitly if the decision was related to the Salvation Army’s fraught relationship with the LGBTQ+ community. The Salvation Army, a conservative Christian organization, has been accused of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination in its provision of services — something it has denied strongly. It also has stated it does not discriminate in employment.
But its churches do not marry same-sex couples, a topic a Salvation Army spokesman tried to pivot away from quickly in an Advocate interview in 2017. In 2012, it joined other faith groups in denouncing marriage equality as a threat to religious freedom, but its leaders have said since then that it is not involved in any efforts to undermine marriage equality.
Macy’s is an LGBTQ-supportive company. It has a perfect 100 score on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. It has advertised in LGBTQ+ publications and featured same-sex couples in its ads. Its 2018 Thanksgiving Day parade featured a performance from the Broadway show The Prom that included a same-sex couple kissing, a first for the parade. It has worked with LGBTQ+ organizations such as HRC and the Trevor Project.
Its charitable work is in keeping with its recently adopted “Mission Every One” statement, which emphasizes “grant funding to advance human rights, racial justice, workforce development and economic opportunity in partnership with organizations including the Human Rights Campaign, National Urban League, Hispanic Federation and the Asian American Business Development Center,” according to Macy’s website.
A Salvation Army spokesperson told the Inquirer, “The Salvation Army is incredibly thankful for the many years of Red Kettle partnership with the Macy’s Corporation. Macy’s decided not to renew our annual Red Kettle agreement in 2022 to focus on other nonprofit causes at this time. We are grateful for all our continuing national and local Red Kettle partners and the generosity of the public to help us help their neighbors in need, which is greater than ever this season.”
The Advocate has sought comment from both Macy’s and the Salvation Army and will update this story if it receives a response. In interviews in 2015 and 2017, the Salvation Army denied any discrimination in its provision of services, which include drug and alcohol recovery services in the U.S., shelter for the homeless, disaster relief, assistance for former prisoners reentering society, and more.
The group’s national spokesman, Lt. Col. Ron Busroe, told The Advocate in 2017 that he’s less concerned that charges of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination will affect donations than that they might discourage LGBTQ+ people from seeking help. “My greater concern is not whether they’re donating, but if they’re saying the Salvation Army won’t help you because you’re gay,” he said.
The Salvation Army once had a statement against same-sex relationships on its website but no longer does. Also, it removed links to conversion therapy groups several years ago. Its site now states that it does not engage in “unlawful discrimination or harassment” on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or other characteristics in its employment practices or provision of services.
In the fews days since Elon Musk closed his deal to buy Twitter, far-right users have started to celebrate what they hope will be the ability to freely use homophobic and transphobic rhetoric and make threats on the social media platform.
On Saturday, former UFC fighter Jake Shields, who has over 340,000 Twitter followers, appeared to be testing the boundaries of the company’s moderation apparatus by posting a photo of a drag queen smiling at a young drag performer with the caption, “This is a groomer.”
Shields added, “I was suspended for this exact tweet a month ago so we will see if Twitter is now free.”
The word “grooming” has long been associated with mischaracterizing LGBTQ people, particularly gay men and transgender women, as child sex abusers.
On Friday, conservative podcaster Matt Walsh, who describes himself as a theocratic fascist, lauded Musk’s acquisition of the company and encouraged his over one million followers to start misgendering trans people.
“We have made huge strides against the trans agenda,” Walsh tweeted. “In just a year we’ve recovered many years worth of ground conservatives had previously surrendered. The liberation of Twitter couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. Now we can ramp up our efforts even more.”
“Laws are changing and public opinion is changing,” Walsh, who held an anti-trans protest in Nashville, Tennessee, attended by thousands last month, continued. “We have done all of this intentionally. It was all part of the plan we laid out and executed.”
The day before, within hours of Musk’s Twitter acquisition, the far-right account Libs of TikTok — which has over 1.4 million Twitter followers and has largely built its following by mocking liberals — tweeted out a post with the word “groomer” written over a dozen times.
When asked by NBC News to comment on the post, Libs of TikTok said in message: “Hi Matt, unfortunately you have pronouns in your Twitter bio which automatically tells me I can’t take you seriously. Good luck with your story!”
The far-right celebration comes as homophobic and transphobic slurs and rhetoric have had a resurgence within Republican politics this year. Conservative lawmakers and pundits have repeatedly accused supporters of LGBTQ rights, critics of legislation like Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law (dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law) and drag performers of trying to “groom” or “indoctrinate” children.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment concerningseveral of the more high-profile tweets that included anti-LGBTQ slurs or sentiments.
Since the start of his takeover bid in April, Musk has emphasized that he will allow forlooser rules over what people can say on the platform. In May, he announced that he would repeal the permanent ban on former President Donald Trump’s account. (The former president was banned from the site in the days following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.)
For Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic who is trans and has over 57,000 Twitter followers, the effects of Musk’s takeover were immediate. Caraballo said she and several of her friends received a flood of transphobic messages within hours of Musk’s takeover Thursday.
“You have several multimillion-follower accounts basically declaring open season on trans people,” Caraballo said. “They’re immediately taking glee and joy in the fact of bullying trans people on the site, and they think that, that’s going to be OK now because Elon’s in charge.”
“This was never about free speech,” she added. “This is literally about their ability to bully people on the site, harass them and then direct their followers who they know are going to launch death threats.”
LGBTQ people already face disproportionate rates of online harassment. Roughly 1.5 million, or 15 percent, of 10 million online posts analyzed between 2016 to 2019 were transphobic, according to a 2019 report by anti-bullying organization Ditch the Label and its analytics partner, Brandwatch.
The report did, however, find that larger social platforms like Twitter and Instagram had the “lowest ratio of abuse to general discussion around trans issues, suggesting that people are using these platforms to spark a conversation and educate.” For Twitter specifically, the report found 12% of the discussion volume was transphobic, compared to 78% for YouTube.
Google, YouTube’s parent company, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Researchers from the Anti-Defamation League found that throughout 2020 and 2021, 64 percent of LGBTQ respondents said they experienced online hate and harassment, compared to 46 percent of Muslims, 36 percent of Jews and about a third of Black, Latino and Asian American respondents.
Caraballo admitted that “there really hasn’t ever been great moderation on Twitter.” However, she added, the company has better policies than most social media companies, including Gab and Parler, which are popular among conservatives.
“My worry is what we’ll see a gradual degradation of the moderation policy,” she said. “Even if nothing formal is changed, I can imagine in coming weeks or so it starts to get increasingly worse as changes and policies are starting to be implemented internally.”
Despite concerns, Musk vowed on Thursday that he would prevent Twitter from becoming a “free-for-all hellscape” and make it “warm and welcoming to all.” Musk also announced on Friday that the company would be “forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints” and will make “no major content decisions or account reinstatements” before the council convenes.
By Sunday, however, he tweeted and deleted what many described as an anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory about the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband. The unfounded theory, which originated from a website that has a history of publishing false information, suggested that Pelosi’s assailant was actually a “male nudist hippie prostitute.”
Caraballo said that going forward, her biggest fear is that most Americans will become “exhausted” by what she predicts will become a “nonstop drumbeat” of anti-LGBTQ tweets.
“In a lot of ways, apathy is probably the most dangerous emotion at this point,” she said.
A Thai businesswoman and transgender advocate bought the Miss Universe Organization for $20 million, making her the first woman to own the global beauty pageant in its 71-year history, her company announced Wednesday.
Anne Jakkapong Jakrajutatip, the CEO of the Thailand-based media company JKN Global Group, is a reality TV star in her home country, where she has appeared on local versions of “Project Runway” and “Shark Tank.” She also helped establish Life Inspired for Transsexual Foundation, a nonprofit transgender rights group.
Jakrajutatip said her company’s acquisition of the Miss Universe brand is a “strong, strategic addition to our portfolio.”
“We seek not only to continue its legacy of providing a platform to passionate individuals from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and traditions, but also to evolve the brand for the next generation,” she said in a press release.
The Miss Universe Organization, which was co-owned by former President Donald Trump between 1996-2015, was bought by Endeavor’s IMG in 2015. The organization will continue to be led by its current CEO, Amy Emmerich, and president, Paula Shugart.
Miss Universe, Harnaaz Sandhu of India, waves after being crowned Dec. 12 in Eilat, Israel.Amir Levy / Getty Images file
Following the deal with the JKN Global Group, Endeavor President Mark Shapiro said in a statement that he’s “proud of the progress the organization has made in becoming a more inclusive and powerful platform where women can advance both their business objectives and their cause-based work.”
Emmerich agreed, saying that JKN Global will help to further grow the organization.
“Despite having recently celebrated the organization’s legacy of more than 70 years, we are just getting started,” she said.
The Miss Universe pageant, which started in 1952, broadcasts in 165 countries. The pageant featured its first transgender contestant in 2018, when Miss Spain, Angela Ponce, competed for the crown.
The right-wing political views of the new head of Grindr are causing some users to delete the popular gay dating and hookup app.
The tag #DeleteGrindr is trending after news incoming CEO George Arison, 44, previously tweeted he was a conservative who supported some of the positions of then-President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Arison, who is gay, starts his new job October 19.
“FYI I am a conservative & agree with some Trump policies,” Arison wrote in a since-deleted tweet on February 28, 2020.
“Should totally run for President,” he wrote of Youngkin in a retweet dated February 24 of this year.
Arison appeared to express support for DeSantis in another retweet from January. In the retweet, he wrote that the man who championed the “don’t say gay” law was “not ideal” but agreed the Republican governor was “better-suited to advance a new, more comabtive [sic] and populist party.”
Users on social media responded quickly, calling out the past statements from Arison.
Another user called out Arison’s support for Youngkin.
Others indicated they were ditching Grindr.
Arison came to Grindr from e-commerce marketplace Shift Technologies, where he was CEO and cofounder.
In a statement to The Advocate about the issue, Grindr centered on Arison’s identity as a gay man, husband, and father.
“George is an out gay man, proudly married to his husband and the father of two children,” a Grindr spokesperson said. “George is passionate about fighting for the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ people around the world.”
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said its policies prohibit any reference to LGBTQ people being “groomers,” a term for would-be child rapists that conservatives have applied to LGBTQ people and allies – especially teachers and doctors – this past year.
The slur has increasingly been used by conservatives to oppose LGBTQ content in schools and gender-affirming care for transgender youth, leading to an increase in threats and harassment.
However, Facebook has continued to make money from at least 150 ads using the slur, even though the media watchdog group Media Matters alerted Meta to the issue. These ads have been seen over one million times, Media Matters reported.
On September 6, Media Matters told Meta about 134 ads using the slur. Meta removed only 40 of the ads from their platform. Now, Media Matters has discovered 19 more ads using the slur. Collectively, the advertisers paid Meta $13,600 to display these ads.
One ad, purchased by the conservative student group Turning Point USA featured a tweet from conservative pundit Candace Owen stating that she has “no patience for this child groomer movement.” The ad read, “Protect your kids.”
Another ad from The Dallas Express, one site of many in a right-wing propaganda network, purchased an ad referring to the anti-trans group “Gays Against Groomers” as an “an organization against the sexualization, indoctrination, and medicalization of children.”
New Jersey’s Holmdel Republican Party ran an ad asking people to support political candidates who “publicly state their opposition to the States [sic] new sex education curriculum which sexualizes our children to advance the agenda of groomers.”
Yet another ad by Republican Illinois state senate candidate Philip Nagel featured him stating that he is “fed up and pissed off with the sick perversion that is being pushed on our children” by “a political class full of pedophiles and groomers.”
Meta has also allowed several ads falsely linking LGBTQ rights to “the supposed normalization of pedophilia in society.”
Kayla Gogarty, deputy research director at Media Matters, told The Daily Dot that Meta’s policies against the slur don’t apparently matter.
“Those are just empty words when we see them turn a blind eye to the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric on their platform,” Gogarty said. “It’s really just another instance of Meta putting profit and engagement over the safety of its users.”
A conservative judge in Texas has issued a ruling against a federal guidance ensuring workplace non-discrimination protections for transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming employees.
In an October 1 ruling, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, declared that, in June 2021, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued guidance that incorrectly interpreted the June 2020 Supreme Court ruling Bostock v. Clayton County.
The 2020 Supreme Court decision found that discrimination against gay and transgender employees is a form of sex discrimination forbidden by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
One year later, the EEOC issued a guidance stating that the ruling required workplaces with more than 15 employees to allow all transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming workers to use the pronouns, dress codes, facilities, and healthcare practices matching their gender identities.
In response, the state of Texas sued the EEOC, and Judge Kacsmaryk just ruled in the state’s favor. He ruled that although the 2020 Supreme Court decision declared that employers can’t discriminate against workers for their sexuality or gender identity, it doesn’t protect an employee’s “correlated conduct.”
As such, Kacsmaryk declared the EEOC’s guidance unlawful and said that Texas doesn’t have to follow it. However, the matter is far from settled.
That’s because 20 Republican-led states have also sued the EEOC over the guidance, alleging that the federal agency violated the Administrative Procedure Act by not following the required process for making new rules and also the Constitution’s 10th Amendment by trampling on states’ authority over privacy expectations in workplaces.
Kacsmaryk’s ruling isn’t entirely surprising considering that he once served as the deputy general counsel for the First Liberty Institute (FLI), a legal organization that generally represents conservative Christians, attacks the separation of church and state, and opposes LGBTQ rights.
“Five justices of the Supreme Court found an unwritten ‘fundamental right’ to same-sex marriage hiding in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment — a secret knowledge so cleverly concealed in the nineteenth-century amendment that it took almost 150 years to find,” he wrote.
Bisexual workers report lower rates of workplace discrimination than cisgender lesbians and gay men, a new study has found, but that may be because fewer cis bisexuals are out at work compared to cis lesbians and gay men.
The Williams Institute — a UCLA’s School of Law group that researches sexual orientation and gender identity issues — analyzed survey data collected in May 2021 from 935 LGBTQ adults in the workforce.
Its analysis found that 33.8 percent of gay and lesbian employees experienced at least one form of employment discrimination, namely, being fired or not hired due to their sexual orientation. Comparatively, 24.4 percent of bi employees reported experiencing the same.
The lower overall rates of discrimination may be due to the fact that fewer bisexuals are out at work. Only 19 percent of bi workers are out to all their co-workers, compared to 50 percent of gay and lesbian workers who are out to co-workers.
Only 19 percent of bi workers are out to their coworkers, compared to 50 percent of gay and lesbian workers. Similarly, only 36 percent of bi employees are out to their supervisors, compared to 74.6 percent of gay and lesbian employees.
Bi men and women were also more likely than gay and lesbian employees to report changing their workplace appearance to hide their sexual orientation. Approximately 26.4 percent of bi workers said they had done so, compared to 17.9 percent of gay and lesbian workers.
Interestingly, roughly 60 percent of gay, lesbian, and bi employees said they avoided social events and personal discussions to reduce the likelihood of discrimination and harassment. But when bi employees were out to their coworkers, they reported facing similar or higher rates of discrimination and harassment as out gay and lesbian workers.
The survey also found that gay and bi men typically faced higher rates of employment discrimination, verbal, and sexual harassment than lesbians and bisexual women.
For example, 57.7 percent of bi men experienced verbal harassment, compared to 26.8 percent of bisexual women. While 41.6 percent of gay men experienced verbal harassment, only 29.5 percent of lesbians experienced the same thing. Nearly 50 to 65 percent of all discrimination was religiously motivated, the respondents said.
Workplace sexual harassment was experienced by 34.8 percent of bi men, 33.6 percent of gay men, 29.2 percent of bi women, and 17.4 percent of lesbian women. While 58 percent of out bi men said they had left previous jobs due to workplace discrimination, only 27 percent of out bi women had left previous jobs for the same reason.
These findings came out just before Celebrate Bisexuality Day, an annual day for uplifting the bisexual community, individuals, and their shared history. Today is Celebrate Bisexuality Day.
A 2021 Gallup found that 57 percent of LGBTQ Americans identify as bisexual.
Internet hosting and security services provider Cloudflare said Saturday that it would block Kiwi Farms, a website associated with harassment campaigns against transgender people.
The announcement puts the future of the fringe internet forum in doubt, though some of its members had already anticipated that Cloudflare could act and began to explore other options.
When attempting to visit Kiwi Farms’ website Saturday evening, an error message appeared that said: “Due to an imminent and emergency threat to human life, the content of this site is blocked from being accessed through Cloudflare’s infrastructure.”
The move comes after Cloudflare became the subject of a pressure campaign by a trans Twitch streamer who has been a target of abuse by Kiwi Farms users.
The streamer, Clara Sorrenti, known to fans as Keffals, responded Saturday in a tweet. “Cloudflare has dropped Kiwi Farms. Our campaign will put out a statement soon,” Sorrenti said.
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince’s announced the move in a blog postand did not mention Sorrenti by name, but said that abuse from Kiwi Farms had intensified in response to her campaign.
“This is an extraordinary decision for us to make and, given Cloudflare’s role as an Internet infrastructure provider, a dangerous one that we are not comfortable with,” Cloudflare’s statement said.
“However, the rhetoric on the Kiwifarms site and specific, targeted threats have escalated over the last 48 hours to the point that we believe there is an unprecedented emergency and immediate threat to human life unlike we have previously seen from Kiwifarms or any other customer before.”
On Friday, NBC News reported that Sorrenti is one of Kiwi Farms’ growing list of targets, and that its harassment techniques could become a playbook against political enemies as the 2024 U.S. presidential election nears.
Kiwi Farms owner Josh Moon did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday from NBC News. A post on the Kiwi Farms Telegram account said Cloudflare’s decision was “done without any discussion.”
“The message I’ve received is a vague suspension notice. The message from Matthew Prince is unclear,” the post stated. “If there is any threat to life on the site, I have received no communication from any law enforcement.”
Cloudflare is an internet services company that provides websites with a variety of crucial resources, most notably its content delivery network and mitigation of distributed denial of services campaigns, or DDoS, a common cyberattack that floods websites with fake internet traffic and renders them unusable.
Cloudflare’s central role as one of the main providers of these services has also made the company a flashpoint around extremists’ internet operations.
The company has generally been hesitant to take action against particular websites or internet operations, citing concerns that it holds immense power in terms of who is able to exist on the web, though it has before.
In 2017, Cloudflare said it would no longer provide services to the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi message board.
Prince also warned about Cloudflare’s role in knocking websites offline.
“Reasonable people can and do believe all those things. But having the mechanism of content control be vigilante hackers launching DDoS attacks subverts any rational concept of justice,” Prince wrote in a blog post, citing the inevitability of cyberattacks that would knock the Daily Stormer offline.
Kiwi Farms users had been anticipating the Cloudflare ban for weeks and had created contingency plans if the site went down, including alternate internet domains, along with accounts and communities on Telegram.
While the decade-old Kiwi Farms archive of personal information on political enemies will be considerably more difficult to access and add to, the site’s user base appears committed to continuing to track trans people online, according to posts made on Telegram about a potential site shutdown.
“They’re thinking about what comes next,” said Fredrick Brennan, who worked with Moon when they were both administrators at the fringe message board 8chan. “I watch them closely, and they’re already thinking about how to move everything to Telegram.”
Brennan has since denounced 8chan, which he created, and successfully advocated to get the page removed from Cloudflare in 2019.
Workers at a Hostess bakery in Chicago accused the snack dessert maker of firing a transgender employee for her gender identity and segregating LGBT employees onto a separate work line at the factory in the Galewood neighborhood on city’s west side at a Wednesday news conference.
Danyell Wallace, 43, said she was filing a charge with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after she was fired in June from the company, where she had worked since 2020.
Wallace, who is transgender and worked as a machine operator for Hostess, said she had been discriminated against by supervisors and was singled out for discipline and firing because of her gender identity.
“Supervisors insulted me to co-workers,” she said. “Other times, it took the form of gossip that was indulged by supervisors.”
Wallace said when she used a single-stall women’s restroom instead of the men’s common restroom for her safety, she became the subject of “stressful and humiliating” gossip at the bakery.
Wallace said she was told she was fired for returning late from breaks, though she said she had not received a warning from the company before her termination. She said she had been about five minutes late returning from breaks a few times and maintained the company’s reasoning was pretextual.
In a statement, Hostess said it had not received an EEOC filing and declined to comment.
Wallace said she had been discriminated against both as a Black worker and because of her gender identity. She alleged Black workers were segregated to the second shift at the bakery and that LGBT workers were moved to the second fryer line on that second shift, where they were singled out for discipline.
Dan Giloth, an organizer with the group Black Workers Matter, which hosted the news conference, said at least four LGBT workershad been fired at the bakery.Giloth said the group planned to file employment commission complaints on behalf of at least two additional workers within the next month.
Wallace’s employment commission charge alleges other similarly situated workers were also segregated and discriminated against at the factory. “There was a policy and practice of hostility toward workers in my area based on my gender identity and sexual orientation,” the complaint reads.
“I’m not doing this just for myself, but for other workers as well,” Wallace said Wednesday.
On Wednesday, former Hostess employee Garland Rose, 53, who is bisexual, said he was fired by Hostess in June and had since become homeless.
“It’s very unfair for anyone, whether you’re straight, gay or bisexual, to have to come to work and feel discriminated against and uncomfortable,” Rose said. “It’s just not right.”
Rose said the company told him he had been fired for taking doughnuts home without proper signoff from his supervisor. Rose said he did break the rules, but maintained it’s common for employees to take doughnuts home and said he was singled out because of his sexual orientation.
Giloth said Black Workers Matter had sent a letter to Hostess leadership in July and had first attempted to mediate Wallace’s firing without taking legal steps. Wallace filed an internal grievance with the company but her termination was upheld, she said.
Wallace said she had also reached out to the union that represents workers at the factory, Local 30 of the Chemical and Production Workers’ Union, but never had a union representative at any disciplinary meetings.
Local 30 did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon.
At Wednesday’s news conference, Audrey Harding, legislative director for Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, read a statement on his behalf and said the commissioner supported Wallace’s employment commission complaint.
“For far too long, Black employees at this plant have suffered racist abuse, firings and retaliation for speaking out and demanding basic fairness and humanity from their bosses,” Harding said. “That must stop.”
Hostess Brands bought the Galewood bakery from Swiss-based Aryzta for about $25 million in 2018.
That year, a federal lawsuit filed against Arytza and two staffing agencies, Labor Network and Metro Staffing Service, alleged Arytza had conspired with the staffing agencies to weed out Black workers seeking employment.
The plaintiff, Anthony Stewart, later agreed to drop the suit with prejudice against the companies; court documents show he reached a settlement with Arytza in 2019. The case had sought class-action status but never reached the class certification stage.
“This plant has had a long, troubled history of discrimination,” said Stewart, who spoke at Wednesday’s news conference.
