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Nike Is Being Accused Of More Discrimination

Though business is all about ups and downs, it was looking like Nike was going to be on the upswing for a while. Following their decision to make Colin Kaepernick the face of their latest marketing campaign, the brand experienced a huge sales boost despite the backlash from others about the controversial decision. But in the eyes of most, the sportswear brand was doing better than ever.

Despite the aforementioned success along with strong Q1 earnings report on Tuesday, unfortunately for the brand, it’s not all good news for Nike this week.

Adding to the plethora of ongoing claims of workplace harassment and discrimination is a new one, which is an unrelated complaint from a transgender contract worker.

According to reports from Williamette Week, Jazz Lyles was a contracted software engineer for the brand, who identified by the pronouns “they” and “them.”

Lyles says that early in their tenure, employees began greeting them with “she” and “her” pronouns. Their follow-up requests to co-workers, supervisors, and everyone else to acknowledge their preferred pronouns were allegedly constantly ignored.

In a complaint, the contract worker claims that a female employee once told them “I’m really not sure what to call you. I know I’m not supposed to call you ‘shemale,'” back in January. “I felt invisible and unheard and silenced,” Lyles says told the newspaper. “Language has the ability to erase a person completely.”

Fast forward to last month, Lyles says that their boss was pushing to bring them all on as a full-time employee, but the request was denied because of the brand saying it was in a so-called “hiring freeze.” Lyles doesn’t believe this to be the case, and thinks this was another case of discrimination–because other contracted employees were allegedly moved to full-time roles around the same time of the “freeze.”

Nike has not yet responded to any of these allegations or issued a statement on the matter.