Nora Mishanec is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has taken legal action in federal court against CCC Group, alleging black contractors were subjected to racial discrimination and harassment at the Lafarge Ravena Cement Plant in 2016 during the facility's three-year modernization project. CCC Group is a Texas-based industrial construction company that performed work at Lafarge. The company’s corporate headquarters is located in San Antonio. The suit alleges CCC fostered a racist work environment in which white employees bragged that their ancestors owned slaves and told a black employee he walked funny because slaves used to walk with a bag on their shoulders picking cotton. One white supervisor allegedly attempted to catch an employee using a noose, the EEOC said. The lawsuit also claims black employees were given more physically taxing and dangerous work than their white counterparts at Lafarge, including being assigned outdoor work in winter while their white colleagues worked inside. The harassment is alleged to have take place at the Coeymans site, between May and November of 2016. Jason C. Zehner, general counsel for CCC Group, categorically denied the allegations. Although the facility is called the Lafarge Ravena Cement Plant it is actually located in the town of Coeymans. Coeymans Town Supervisor George McHugh declined to comment, except to say all the contractors who worked on the Lafarge kiln project were from outside the area. The EEOC filed its case in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York. The CCC Group has until August to formally answer the allegations and is scheduled to appear for the first time in federal court on September 1. Read the full story at HudsonValley360 [dot] com.