As seen in a recent press release. 

Ms. Yuk Wa Suen filed suit in San Francisco Superior Court against her former employer, ABM Industries, Inc., alleging violations of the state Fair Employment and Housing Act. Former janitor Suen claims that ABM and its supervisor Lino Aguilar created a hostile work environment for Chinese employees by over-burdening them with work, screaming at them, and banning the use of Cantonese in the workplace.

The complaint alleges that Aguilar sought to eliminate Chinese janitorial employees from San Francisco’s Mills Building, a site managed by ABM, because he resented the camaraderie between the workers, and to retaliate for employee complaints to ABM and the janitors’ union, Service Employees International Union Local 87. Suen additionally claims that on November 22, 2006 Aguilar banned the use of Chinese language at work, and that ABM failed to address a complaint to the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing resulting from the language ban.

Suen’s attorneys, Joshua Arce and Amir Sarreshtehdary of non-profit civil rights legal aid organization Brightline Defense Project, learned of the severe distress and anxiety caused by ABM earlier in the year as Suen was Brightline’s own janitor. “Yuk Wa came in to tidy up our office in February and something just seemed wrong,” explains Arce. “She wasn’t the same happy, cheerful person she usually was.”

Suen spoke of the pressues placed upon her by ABM and her fear of her supervisor Aguilar. Suen continued to work for ABM in hopes that ABM would soon respond to complaints about Aguilar and the work environment he had created. By the time Brightline moved offices to a shared space with Suen’s union, SEIU Local 87, in May 2007, Suen had given up that hope.

“When we opened our new office’s doors in May, Yuk Wa was the first person to walk in,” Arce recounts. “The union told us they had a member who had just been placed on medical leave because of what was going on over at the Mills Building and in walked Yuk Wa. At first she was sad because of the work situation, but became as happy as we were to meet one another again.”

Suen’s allegations, if proven at trial, constitute ABM’s violation of the Fair Employment and Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination in the workplace, obligates employers to take steps to prevent discriminatory harassment, and makes it illegal to unreasonably prohibit the use of a specific language in the workplace.