A federal agency has revealed that Sony BMG Music Entertainment,
home to Columbia and Jive Records, intentionally
laid off its black employees from a New York City sales office while keeping its
white employees.

According to the New York Post, an October 2006 ruling by the New York office
of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) asserts that Sony "overwhelmingly"
targeted black employees after a merger and restructuring in the summer of 2004.

The EEOC found that six black employees of the aforementioned Manhattan office
received pink slips, including three who accepted a severance package and three
who were axed "involuntarily." The only black worker to survive was
a mail clerk. None of the company’s eight white employees were released.

The EEOC’s ruling has given Tamieka Blair, a former field marketing rep, the
right to sue Sony BMG claiming she "was the victim of race discrimination."
Blair told The Post she initially accepted her layoff after a boss told her
"it was just a numbers game," but when the ousted workers called each
other, "we realized it was all the black people," she explained.

Sony BMG insists it based its layoff decisions on job performance but the EEOC
claims the company had "no documented procedure for determining who the
best players were," and "lacked performance standards." Mitchell
Carlinsky, Blair’s lawyer, divulged that his client’s suit, which aims to hold
Sony accountable, will be filed this week in Brooklyn federal court.