MILWAUKEE — The City of Milwaukee's former Director of Diversity Recruitment has spoken for the first time since the Common Council denied a mediated settlement agreement against the city concerning the matter.
Royce Flowers-Nash claims that he was discriminated against and subsequently fired from the city's Department of Employee Relations as an act of retaliation. Flowers-Nash recalls the pride his youngest daughter felt when she told her friends where her father worked.
"My dad works with the mayor," she would often say.
Flowers-Nash had high hopes as the City of Milwaukee's first diversity recruiter.
"When I walked into this position, I thought that this was an opportunity for me to open up the doors for people who may not generally have opportunities," Flowers-Nash recalled.
When the position started, Flowers-Nash hit the ground running. During a performance review of his first six months, a supervisor gave him exceeding and outstanding marks, he said. Soon after, the praise started to fade.
During his first television interview, Nash claimed that his work environment became hostile after he and a female co-worker didn't see eye-to-eye on a project.
"When I noticed different things that didn't necessarily fall into the line of promoting diversity I spoke to those things," Flowers-Nash said.
Many of his concerns were around city jobs that require an online application. He felt that applying online could create barriers for a qualified workforce that may not have been computer savvy.
"When I brought these things up, they didn't register as important and with something that's as important as diversity. Diversity starts at the top," said Royce Flowers-Nash.
The former local official brought these concerns to his supervisor, however he claims that she dismissed them.
In a 2018 complaint filed to the states Equal Rights Division, Royce Flowers-Nash told an investigator that the same supervisor had animosity toward African-Americans. He alleged that in August of 2017, she told him that her father "didn't allow her to date black men because they are liars, manipulators and take advantage of white girls," according to the complaint.
When the supervisor was questioned about the allegation, she denied it.
In March of 2018 Nash was fired for what the City of Milwaukee considers "unsatisfactory job performance and questionable conduct toward his superiors."
In his final performance review written one day after he met with the director of employee relations, a supervisor wrote that Nash "exhibited disrespectful and divisive behavior and created a toxic work environment," according to the complaint.
After a state investigation determined there was probable cause for his reported case of discrimination, the City of Milwaukee agreed to settle with Flowers-Nash. However, the common council denied the compensation package.
Because of this denial, Flowers-Nash and his attorney are now ready to take the case to a higher court.
"There's a guy trying to change the culture, and hired to change the culture. The morning he complains about that culture that we need to change, he gets fired. It's not only ironic but if it's cruel," said Peter Fox, attorney for Royce Flowers-Nash.
As Nash waits for his case to progress, he wonders if his name can ever be restored. TODAY'S TMJ4 reached out to the city attorney's office for comment and was told that they decline to coment on open litigation.
We additionally requested the demographics of the department of employee relations we learned out of the 37 employees 19% are African American and 84 % of the department is made up of women.
On a larger scale the city employees 6,455 people 17 hundred of those employees are African-American.
