Four Korean women claim racial bias by Delta Airlines

KIRO7.OOM

Four women of Korean descent claim racial bias when they were fired by Delta Airlines.

FOUR WOMEN allege they were fired from Delta Airlines for speaking Korean.

Ji-Won Kim, Lilian Park, Jean Yi and Jongjin An with a combined total of 50 years of experience working for Delta Airlines at Sea-Tac Airport, filed a lawsuit claliming they were wrongfully terminated in May 2017 from their jobs as customer service and gate agents at Sea-Tac International Airport near Seattle.

“I treated all Delta passengers as my family - brothers and sisters, parents,” Park told KIRO 7. "Everything came from the heart.”

The four women were born in Korea. Park, Yi and An are now U.S. citizens. Kim expects to be one soon.

They have filed a lawsuit alleging “race and national origin discrimination and retaliation.”

The women believe their fluency in the Korean language was one of the reasons they were all hired by Delta, which flies daily between Sea-Tac and South Korea. According to Yi, Korean-speaking passengers “were so glad to see me. They say, 'Oh I feel so comfortable. You know, they don’t speak English.'”

In their lawsuit, the women say they were "assigned to work flights to and from Korea, composed of many Korean-speaking passengers, they were singled out and admonished for speaking Korean," with their Korean-speaking passengers.

An said she was told by her Delta manager there were complaints “from the other non-Korean-speaking agents. They feel uncomfortable, so please limit speaking Korean.”  But the women – who are all over 40 and all plaintiffs in the lawsuit – claim other foreign language-speaking Delta employees were never told to limit their speech and that only the Korean speakers were.

 “I thought this was a pretty clear case of discrimination,”  said their attorney, Jennifer Song, who works at the Law Offices of Judith A. Lonnquist in Seattle,

The women also believe their termination came as retaliation for complaints they filed against another Delta employee for sexual harassment.

The women were reportedly harassed multiple times by the same person while on the job. Yi told KIRO 7 she tried to “avoid touching” from the harasser “so when he came to the gate, I just moved out of sight. I didn’t want to deal with him touching, whispering.”

The women reported the misconduct to their superiors but the alleged harasser is still employed by Delta. 

According to the lawsuit, the women "were suspended and ultimately terminated for allegedly offering unauthorized upgrades." The woman said an upgrade offers are standard practices.

“Offering free upgrades, especially on an oversold flight, is a common practice” Kim said, “but suddenly, it became a reason to be terminated, just for us, for Korean women.”

In a statement, Delta Air Lines denied the allegations and said the women were terminated for “violated ticketing and fare rules.”

"Delta does not tolerate workplace discrimination or harassment of any kind. Such behavior runs counter to our core values of diversity and inclusion and our mission of connecting the world.  

"We take allegations of workplace harassment and discrimination very seriously and our investigations into allegations made by these former employees were found to be without merit.  

"These former employees were unfortunately but appropriately terminated because the company determined they violated ticketing and fare rules.  

"Delta is confident that these claims will ultimately be determined to be without merit."  

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