Seven former Black employees at Woodgrain, Inc., a global wood products manufacturer, allege in a federal lawsuit that they were fired after complaining about racial slurs and discriminatory treatment at the company’s Aurora, Colorado, plant.
In their lawsuit filed on May 21 in U.S. District Court in Colorado (and obtained by Atlanta Black Star), the plaintiffs say that their workplace took on a racially hostile atmosphere after Idaho-based Woodgrain, which has $900 million in annual revenues, acquired Trimco Millwork in Aurora in December 2023 and brought in a new general manager, Steven Nybo.
Nybo, who is white, began talking about wanting to “change the culture” at the facility, the lawsuit says, where most of the non-management employees were Black or Hispanic. For Nybo, that meant replacing African-American employees with years of experience with white employees who had little or no experience in door and wood molding manufacturing, the plaintiffs allege.
While long-tenured African-American and Hispanic employees earned $20 or $21 per hour, Woodgrain paid new white employees more, the complaint says. One white man who had no prior experience in door or trim processing was hired with a starting wage of $25 per hour, prompting complaints about pay disparity among Black employees, who also alleged they were denied opportunities for promotions and that all open positions were being filled by white applicants.
Plaintiff Robert Simmons, who had worked for Trimco in a sales operation position when he left in August 2023, returned in April 2024 after Woodgrain took over to work in its door shop. Two months later, he applied for an inside sales job, but was never interviewed for the position, he claims.
Instead, Nybo hired two young white employees from outside the company with no experience in either sales or millwork, the lawsuit says, and both earned more than a Black man who had held the same position for two years, Darren Brown.
Similarly, when Brown applied for an operations manager position in mid-2024, he was never contacted for an interview, and was later told that the company had lost his application, he says.
Woodgrain then hired Jay Moore, a white man, for the operations manager position. Moore “immediately began showing contempt” for Black employees, who overheard him making statements disparaging them and expressing enthusiasm for replacing them with new employees, the complaint contends.
That included Moore allegedly telling Black employees that he “can’t wait until we get a new crew” because “you motherf—ers can’t count.”
Simmons said when he suggested hiring a Black job candidate in his department, a supervisor told him he “did not want the Black Panther Party in his office. Two was already too much, three would be the Black Panther Party,” Simmons told Denver7.com.
Then Moore shocked plaintiffs Corey Tate, Darius Wynn and Laray Smith by walking up and telling them they looked “like monkeys trying to f—k a coconut,” the lawsuit says.
Tate shot back that Moore “sounds like an Alabama slave master,” to which Moore allegedly responded, “Well, what else would I call you other than monkeys?”
The lawsuit says that the three Black employees immediately asked for a meeting with Nybo to report the blatantly racist comment and to discuss how Woodgrain would respond to it.
When they met with him a few days later, Nybo “protected Moore and attempted to rationalize his comments,” saying that Moore had used “a poor choice of words” and assuring them that the situation “had been handled.” But the company never disciplined Moore or took any remedial action in response to his comments likening his employees to monkeys, the complaint alleges.
In its answer to the complaint filed on June 25, Woodgrain admits that Moore made the unsavory comment alleged by the plaintiffs, but “specifically denies that there was any racial connotation or animus connected to the statement.”
The three Black employees escalated their concerns to human resources, resulting in a phone conversation with Tara Schiff, who did not ask them what had happened or whether they felt safe in their workplace, the lawsuit says, and reiterated that Nybo had “handled it.
The dismissive response of management about the racial slur, along with disparate and discriminatory racial treatment prompted several of the plaintiffs to draft an “open letter” to company management in December 2024 explaining that Black and Brown employees at Woodgrain in Aurora had been “treated as if we are second class citizens,” signed by 21 Black and Hispanic employees.
It detailed Moore’s racist comments and described Woodgrain’s hiring, promotion, and pay practices, resulting in Black and Hispanic employees receiving less pay and fewer promotional opportunities than white employees, the complaint says, concluding that “the toxic and biased culture … is not right and needs to be corrected.”
The “petition” was emailed to Woodgrain management and its HR department on Jan. 2, 2025.
The next day, Woodgrain’s management provided a typed letter from HR Director Michelle Bloom to all employees at the Aurora facility stating their complaint was “surprising” because “Woodgrain managers, employees, and customers find Woodgrain a good place to work,” and further stating HR would be launching an investigation.
The letter went on to say that while the investigation took place, it was strongly recommended that all Denver employees “stay focused on production work, specifically avoiding all forms of excessive or disruptive gossip that might disparage Woodgrain. Vindictive gossip and/or gossip that is meant to tarnish Woodgrain’s or any employee’s reputation is a form of workplace bullying and will not be tolerated. Failure to comply with the above could lead to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment.”
The letter also encouraged all employees to “exercise caution” in reference to “a two-page letter that has been circulated to the Denver workforce,” warning that “as employees of Woodgrain, you are not permitted to defame the company” and that any employee “found to be spreading false or malicious information that harms Woodgrain or its employees may be considered to have initiated a hostile work environment.”
Then Woodgrain’s management began increasing scrutiny over the seven Black plaintiffs and other non-white employees at the Aurora plant, the lawsuit says, including by reprimanding them for listening to music while they worked, but not their white co-workers who did so.
A week after Bloom’s letter was given to employees, Woodgrain’s regional human resources manager, Melissa Stubbs, came to Aurora to interview employees who had signed the petition about their experiences with race-based disparate treatment, and also inquired about when the “monkeys f—ing a coconut” comment had taken place.
The plaintiffs allege that Woodgrain chose to have Nybo and Moore present during their interviews in order to intimidate them.
On Jan. 14, 2025, Brown wrote an email to Bloom, Stubbs, Schiff, and other managers, and copied Lamb, expressing concern about the duration of the investigation, asking if Woodgrain would be hiring an independent investigator, and if it would investigate employees’ concerns about disparate pay.
Bloom responded in an email to Brown, writing, “Productivity, good work performance and meeting customer expectations are paramount for our Woodgrain workforce. For that reason, I will recommend that you exercise discretion when copying other workers on your email. Your emails should be sent only to me so as not to disturb the productivity of the workforce.”
Three days later, Bloom held meetings with employees in every department in Aurora, including one meeting where four of the plaintiffs were present. She acknowledged there had been problems at the facility and said she’d come to Aurora to “hit the reset button” and that Woodgrain would not tolerate any further “drama” at the facility. (The defendants admit this in their answer.)
Bloom went on to say that employees who failed to get on board would be “taken care of,” the lawsuit says, and told the plaintiffs that if they left the company they were not permitted to work for any of Woodgrain’s competitors, and that they’d be hearing from the one of the company’s law firms if they did so. The defendants deny that Bloom made such statements.
Shortly after the meeting, Lamb, the most senior African-American employee in the Aurora plant with 10 years of employment, was fired by the district manager. He was not given a reason, the lawsuit says.
On January 28, plaintiff Isaac Medlock was called into the office by Moore and Nybo and informed that Woodgrain had reviewed the company trucks’ GPS tracking history and discovered that he had been driving to an unauthorized location, his home, during work hours. The lawsuit says this allegation is false and pretextual, asserting that Medlock never went home or to other unsanctioned locations during work hours.
The next day, Brown, Smith, Tate, Wynn and Simmons were brought to a conference room, where Nybo, reading from a script, told them that due to a business slowdown the company had to make budget cuts, and the five of them had been identified as low performers and were being terminated.
In reality, all five had performed satisfactorily according to positive performance reviews they had received just days earlier, the lawsuit claims. The real reason they were fired nearly simultaneously “is that they are African American and repeatedly complained of racially discriminatory treatment.”
The complaint alleges that Woodgrain violated federal and state civil rights laws by subjecting them to severe and pervasive harassment because of their race, paying them lower wages than similarly situated white employees, denying them opportunities to advance, subjecting them to increased scrutiny and then terminating them in retaliation for complaining about racial discrimination.
It also alleges that Woodgrain violated Colorado law prohibiting employers from using threats or other means of intimidation to prevent people from working at any place they choose. Such non-compete covenants are only permissible for highly compensated workers (in 2025, those earning more than $127,091 annually) to protect trade secrets, the lawsuit says.
The seven Black plaintiffs seek a jury trial to determine actual and compensatory damages for lost wages, restricted career opportunities, emotional pain, suffering, mental anguish, and loss of dignity. They also seek unspecified punitive damages.
In its answer, Woodgrain denied most of the plaintiff’s allegations, asserting that it hires employees of all races, colors and ethnicities at the Aurora plant, including Caucasian employees.
It denied that Nybo had set out to change the company culture by hiring more white employees, as alleged, and said the Aurora facility was “a low performing facility by Woodgrain standards and was subject to the same cultural improvement program (the Friedman Fundamentals Program) that all 37 of the company’s business locations participated in.”
The answer denied that Moore’s hiring was based on color, ethnicity, race or any other criteria precluded by federal, state or local laws, and denied that Moore’s “monkeys” comment was a “racist trope” or “had any racial connotation.”
Woodgrain also denied that its hiring, promotion and pay practices were discriminatory, and claimed that any employment actions taken against the plaintiffs were for “legitimate, nondiscriminatory, non-pretextual reasons.”
Woodgrain did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Atlanta Black Star. It sent a statement to Denver7.com, which said in part that “Woodgrain managers and associates are firmly committed to maintaining a professional and respectful workplace free from all forms of discrimination, harassment, and disruption.”
A scheduling conference for all parties is set for Sept. 3 at the federal courthouse in Denver before Magistrate Judge Susan Prose.
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