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- <text id=91TT1445>
- <title>
- July 01, 1991: Business Notes:Discrimination
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- July 01, 1991 Cocaine Inc.
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- BUSINESS, Page 56
- Business Notes
- DISCRIMINATION
- The Price of Prejudice
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Why would Shell Oil suddenly fire a 19-year employee who rose
- from $13,900 research veterinarian to $115,000 executive?
- According to Jeffery Collins, for one reason only: he is gay.
- Last week Judge Jacqueline Taber of California's Superior Court
- agreed, and ordered Shell to pay $5.3 million in damages for
- violating state law and its own contract with "a totally devoted
- employee."
- </p>
- <p> Collins' trouble began in 1985, when he was director of a
- Shell subsidiary developing anticancer drugs. Using his office
- computer, Collins wrote an invitation to a party for gay men,
- which accidentally came to his superior's attention. Four days
- later, Collins was fired. Judge Taber determined that
- Houston-based Shell "created out of whole cloth" a damning job
- report on Collins to conceal the real reason for the firing: "a
- homosexual is unacceptable to Shell's management." Shell may
- appeal.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-