Court documents recently filed by American Apparel detail racist remarks made by a former CEO who it fired last year, reports ABC CBN.
According to the documents, founder and former CEO Dov Charney told Filipino workers they were “”Filipino pigs…with your faces in the trough.”
He went on to say he would tell them what to do because he was their Ferdinand Marcos. Charney is also accused of violating the company’s sexual harassment policy.
The documents were filed in response to a defamation suit filed against the company by Charney.
The San Francisco based Westbay Pilipino Multi-Service Center said it is considering filing a class action suit against Charney and American Apparel to protect Filipino American workers from discrimination.
You can hear their statement in the video below from ABS CBN.
RE: American Apparel CEO reportedly fired for being racist: No one ever alleged that Dov Charney discriminated against Filipino workers at American Apparel. The allegation was a fiction. No Filipino workers or Filipino fashion models have confirmed the allegation. To the contrary they have all shown respect for Charney.
In fact, on May 6, 2014, shortly before being ousted from the company he founded, Charney debuted a CNN documentary film called “Documented” by Filipino American Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and activist, who documented his journey as an immigrant in the US. Click here to see the flyer for the film, which was attended by hundreds of employees and guests, including dozens of Filipino employees and members of the Filipino American Worker Center.