The city of Chicago has reached a tentative $5.8 million settlement with Water Department employees who said they were subjected to racist comments from managers and shorted on overtime and promotions.
Announcement of the settlement comes just a month before the case was to go to trial. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly had yet to rule on whether former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, now serving as U.S. ambassador to Japan, would have to testify.
The deal must still be finalized and then approved by the City Council. Details of the settlement were not filed in federal court, but an attorney for the workers disclosed the amount. A spokeswoman for the city Law Department declined comment.
“The racism lasted for decades and affected countless Black employees, which raises the question of why the city’s uppermost leaders failed to act,” said attorney Vic Henderson. “The sad and most obvious answer is that they did not care. Shame on them.”
The agreement covers a dozen current and former Water Department employees, many of whom worked for the department for decades, despite being passed over for better shifts and promotions, and a workplace where white supervisors were accused of routinely making racist and sexist remarks.
The case was filed in 2017, the year a probe by the city inspector general exposed numerous racist emails exchanged between top supervisors at the Water Department.
That inspector general, Joseph Ferguson, called for the firing of seven Water Department employees. Emanuel fired Water Management Commissioner Barrett Murphy, managing deputy William Bresnahan and superintendent Paul Hansen, son of former alderman Bernard Hansen.
Among Ferguson’s allegations was Paul Hansen used his city email account to buy or sell firearms and cars and send hate-filled emails describing African Americans as “wild animals.”
In 2022, the city paid out nearly $1 million to a bricklayer in the department who said he was subjected to abuse, taunts and retaliation at the hands of Hansen.
A federal judge overseeing the case last year declined to grant class-action status that would have allowed all minority employees of the department to seek damages.
Lawyers for the 12 plaintiffs hired an expert who found that Black workers got significantly less overtime assignments and were promoted less often while also being disciplined more frequently, according to filings in the case.
“It was plain to anyone who looked that the racism cascaded from the very top of the organization like water travels down a hill,” Henderson said.
Six months later, nearly two dozen current and former Water Management employees complained at a City Council committee hearing that the same hate-filled culture persisted, even after a white commissioner was replaced with Randy Conner, an African American, who is back leading the department under Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Leslie Travis Cook, a 20-year veteran water rate taker, said one supervisor threw a stapler at her, but the city “did nothing,” she said. Another time, a co-worker tried to “run me down in a parking lot,” but the city “dismissed it as horseplay,” she said.
“They are supposed to protect their employees. They failed to do that,” Cook told the committee.
Derrick Edmond, a 33-year veteran assigned to the south water purification plant — and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit — testified at that hearing that he was forced to undergo 18 interviews for a single promotion because the job apparently was reserved for “a young white candidate.”
“What they want you to do is get discouraged and don’t go to the interview no more — and many of us do that. But I said I’m not stopping. So I … kept on going. Then, they gave me the job and they turned around and took it back,” Edmond said.
In all, about 20 current and former employees testified at that 2018 hearing, with the goal of pressuring the city to settle the 2017 lawsuit.
But the lawsuit lingered for years — until Monday.
