Tuesday March 28, 2017
An investigation by Attorney General Bob Ferguson's office found evidence that Electroimpact and its founder refused to hire Muslim applicants and "engaged in religious and/or national origin harassment." USA TODAY
A Washington state aerospace company whose CEO refused to hire Muslims, replied to jokes about killing them with smiley faces and who told employees they must have babies to keep American from being “backfilled with rubbish from the desperate and criminal populations of the third world” agreed Thursday to pay a civil rights settlement of $485,000, according to state attorney general Bob Ferguson.
The settlement with Electroimpact over its “outrageous” conduct is the largest ever in Washington state history, Ferguson said.
The small aerospace automation company is based in Mukilteo, a town just north of Seattle and close to Boeing’s large Everett, Wash., plant. According to its website, the company was designed by its founder, Peter Zieve, as “a haven for engineers.”
According to the complaint, Zieve asked for a photo of all job applications and then screened out anyone who said they were Muslim or who he believed to be Muslim based on their name, photograph or national origin,
A full 94.5% of the company’s 474 engineers were white, according to a June 30, 2016, report to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Company chief of staff Ben Hempstead said the issues were “old news from last year” and have already been dealt with internally.
Zieve’s personal opinions are not related to the company mission, but employees and customers “value his technical insight and product leadership and will continue to benefit from his long-term view,” Hempstead said.
The complaint quoted a "jokes" email list run by Electroimpact that featured many anti-Muslim statements. One example was, “How do you save half the Muslims? Kill the other half.”
On May 6, 2015, Zieve emailed an employee a smiley face emoji after the employee sent out an email that read, “The winning drawing at the ‘Draw Mohammad’ art contest in Garland, Texas” and attached an image of a chalk outline of a dead body.
He also encouraged employees to get involved with a group that was trying to stop construction of a mosque in Mukilteo. According to the complaint, some were asked to watch a video titled "How to stop mosques."
The issue was first brought to public attention by an article in the Seattle Times in 2016.
Zieve also pushed employees to marry and have children because as he said in an email to staff, “if we don’t make more babies the light will (go) out on civilization.”
Until July 2016, employees who married got a $1,000 bonus. In 2015, he told employees he would also bring a $1,000 check to any wedding he attended, in addition to the bonus.
Children fulfilled God’s mandate to be “fruitful and multiply,” an article he linked to said.
In an email from Feb. 6, 2015, Zieve wrote that, “When [our sons and daughters] choose to not repopulate and allow our wonderful country to be back-filled with rubbish from the desperate and criminal populations of the third world[,] I find that to be disgusting and I find those persons to make these decisions to be repulsive and I don’t like them around me.”
An employee objected to an anti-Muslim statement on the email list was told to leave the company.
When another suggested that “world cultures are too complicated to discuss in a jokes email list,” Zieve replied that the employee was out of line.
Not everyone at the company perceived the atmosphere as hostile. Lucas Sallee, a mechanical engineer, has worked there since 2005. He was in the process of converting to Islam at the time of his hire and his wife was a Muslim refugee from southeast Asia, he said.
“I’ve never had any problem here, that stuff about the political emails and the wedding bonus was all overblown,” he said.
Some of the jokes on the Jokes email list “was pretty ugly stuff but most of it was kind of par for the course in America,” he said.
As an engineer, the company is a dream workplace where employees are empowered to “an incredible degree,” he said. “It’s a great place to work.”
In the consent decree, Electroimpact agreed that Zieve will no longer take part in hiring for non-management positions, won’t base compensation on mairital status and that someone other than Zieve will take employee complains.
The employee handbook will also be changed to make clear that Electroimpact doesn’t allow harassment based on race, religion and national origin among others.
On his LinkedIn page, Zieve stated, “My company was founded in July, 1986 by me. I have allot (sic) of fun working there so I'm not leaving without a fight.”