‘Like a Plantation’: Engineer Sues Ford for Retaliation

Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant has paid more than $30 million in federal harassment settlement; while new lawsuit says nothing changed.

By Stephanie Gadlin

  Black women from Ford Motor Company’s Chicago Assembly Plant at 12600 S. Torrence Ave. in the city’s 10th Ward stood before Chicago City Hall Wednesday, July 1, and named two institutions they charge with enabling a pattern of sexual harassment, retaliatory terminations and willful indifference: Ford Motor Company, the employer, and United Auto Workers Local 551, the union collecting their dues.

  “Ford Motor Company, the plant, (is really) the plantation,” Chamair Jenkins, a former body shop worker fired by telephone in August 2025 after nearly 15 years on the line, told the Crusader. “It was like prison and a plantation.” Workers, she said, were identified not by name but by eight-digit numbers. “By numbers and not names.”

  Joined by the National Association of Black Defenders (NABD), a civil rights nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., a group of former Ford employees and supporters rallied to expose the alleged pattern of discrimination, harassment at the plant, along with the alleged failure of their union representatives to advocate for them.

  At the center of the legal action is Ayanna Lynn, a Jackson State University graduate from Indianola, Mississippi. Lynn filed her lawsuit independently and is not affiliated with NABD or any of the union complaints. As an engineering specialist in management, she was not a UAW member and was not covered by the union’s bargaining agreement when Ford terminated her in September 2025. Her 11-count federal civil rights complaint, Lynn v. Ford Motor Company (Case No. 1:26-cv-03184), filed March 20, 2026, concerns Ford’s management chain alone.

  “I am the first in my immediate family to leave Mississippi,” Lynn told the Crusader. “Why would someone with two masters leave Mississippi to get wrongfully terminated?”

  Lynn holds a bachelor’s in engineering, a master’s in engineering and an MBA. According to her federal complaint, she reported unwanted sexual advances from Quality Manager Sunil Archante to her direct supervisor, Process Engineering Manager Domanique Rawls, who allegedly laughed off the complaint. When Lynn escalated, the complaint states, Rawls retaliated through personal demands, sabotage of her performance reviews, blocked transfer requests and deliberate undermining of an engineering project she led. She attempted to use Ford’s QR code reporting portal on June 11, 2025. Labor Relations Manager Tiffani Orange allegedly told her the system was not for retaliation complaints despite retaliation being listed on the portal itself. Ford terminated Lynn on Sept. 8, 2025. Her lawsuit invokes the 2025 amendments to the Illinois Whistleblower Act.

  “I was being sexually harassed, and also from a defamation of character standpoint, and that’s what led to my termination,” she said. “Everything was because I started submitting harassment claims, and I was told that because I submitted those claims, that’s why I was terminated.”

  Ford cited performance and behavior as the reason for her termination. “They made it seem like my performance and behavior was the reason they fired me,” she said, “but it was because all of this started happening after I started submitting complaints.”

  Lynn said she was the only person in her department with two master’s degrees. “I have seen a pattern of this behavior,” she said, “but yes, I was singled out from an African American female that’s educated.” She began her career at Nissan’s plant in Canton, Mississippi, before moving to Chicago. She has not worked since Ford terminated her. “Ford has been sued several times,” she said, “and it’s time for a change.”

  The revelations arrive as Black women are losing jobs at alarming national rates. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, African American women’s unemployment climbed from 5.4 percent to 7.3 percent in 2025, the highest rate in four years, while the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found Black women lost more than three times as many jobs as other women during the year’s most volatile months, with manufacturing, the sector employing Jenkins and her co-workers, posting a 12.9 percent employment decline for Black women in the same period.

  Across manufacturing, retail and corporate positions, the U.S. auto industry alone employs more than 4.4 million workers, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, a sector in which Black workers are overrepresented on the assembly floor and underrepresented in the executive suite.

  The Union Side of the Story

  The accounts of Jenkins and Kelise M. Williams, another Ford worker, are firsthand allegations that have not resulted in litigation and could not be independently verified by the Crusader. However, both accounts were harrowing.

  Jenkins alleged a supervisor came onto her shift smelling of alcohol on Feb. 17, 2025, made repeated unwanted advances and dismissed her warnings about surveillance. “Man, don’t nobody care about that camera,” he allegedly said. After her overnight break, she said, he grabbed her head and whispered: “Good girl.” She filed a formal complaint. Ford told her no cameras existed at that location. The mother of three claimed the supervisor has since received a 30-day suspension for drinking on the job.

  Jenkins provided the Crusader with a photograph she said shows her posing with a Ford human resources manager in the same plant area with the same display screens visible that Ford used to justify her termination, a photo she said appeared on Ford’s official social media and the UAW page without consequence. She also provided a screenshot of another Ford worker she identified as politically aligned with the union building chairman selling food from inside the plant and posting it publicly online without termination, she alleged.

  The Crusader is not publishing their identities because they have not been formally named in litigation nor could they be reached for a response.

  “They lie and scheme, and then they tell us to dream big while they keep us small,” Jenkins said. “Ford Motor Company is not able to do anything to us without the union allowing it. It is the chairman and the delegates that are in there that we put in office due to a popularity contest, not merit.”

  Jenkins, who lives in Hobart, Ind., also alleged UAW Local 551 Plant Chairman Alan ‘Coby’ Millender, Sr. runs a loyalty-based faction that protects aligned members while shelving complaints from those who do not. “We pay our dues, but they don’t even follow their own rules,” she said. Local 551 President Chris Pena did not respond to a request for comment.

  Millender, who has been honored by the Cook County Board of Commissioners, could not be reached for comment via UAW’s office number. Officials did not respond to inquiries left on voicemail.

  Williams said she filled radiators and engine fluids on the assembly line for 11 and a half years before being fired in January 2024. A single mother of a growing son, the plant worker was raised in the Pill Hill area. She alleged she reported death threats from a co-worker to her UAW steward and was told nothing would be done. The co-worker allegedly reversed the complaint against her.

  “She went upstairs and reversed it around and said I threatened her,” Williams said. The union filed a grievance on Jenkins’ behalf four days after her termination demanding reinstatement with back pay. The Crusader reviewed that form. Whether it was pursued could not be confirmed before deadline.

Defenders Come North

  Lynn’s case drew a delegation from Mississippi to City Hall and to the plant. The National Association of Black Defenders (NABD), a Washington, D.C.-based civil rights organization, came to stand with workers whose accounts they say mirror a national pattern of institutional failure.

  “What we are is a national organization that speaks out for those that cannot speak out for themselves,” Priscilla Williams Till, NABD’s Mississippi director and a distant cousin of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Chicago boy lynched in Mississippi in 1955, told the Crusader. “We expose corruption.” Williams Till is founder of the Emmett Till Justice for Families Foundation and is running for U.S. Senate in Mississippi as a Democrat in November 2026.

  Dr. Michael McCorvey, Sr., NABD’s founder and chief executive officer, also spoke during the City Council meeting to reach Ald. Peter Chico, whose 10th Ward includes the Ford plant. “We are calling for justice for all of these workers,” he said. “On one hand you have employees facing sexual harassment and racial discrimination in the workplace, and on the other you have people paying money to a union who does nothing for them.

  “We are calling for a full investigation on what is happening in this city and at this worksite,” he said. “These men and women shouldn’t go to work and have to worry about being harassed or bullied on the job. If nobody is going to stand up for them NABD will and we will not back down until we get some answers.”

  Also part of the delegation was Shirley G. Johnson, NABD’s national director of membership, and Fred Chambliss, a federal whistleblower terminated in 2023 after alleging corruption and unpaid wages at the Federal Correctional Institute in Yazoo City, Mississippi.

Three Decades, Same Plant

  Lynn’s lawsuit lands against a federal record at the Hegewisch plant stretching to 1998. A class action produced a 1999 EEOC agreement requiring Ford to pay nearly $8 million to affected workers and commit $10 million to discrimination-prevention training. The Warnell v. Ford class action settled for $12 million in 2000. A 2014 class action, Van v. Ford Motor Company (Case No. 1:14-cv-08708), alleged physical assaults, digital harassment and quid pro quo demands. The EEOC returned in 2017 with a $10.125 million settlement requiring five years of monitoring at both the Chicago Assembly and Chicago Stamping plants in Chicago Heights.

  That oversight expired before Lynn filed her complaint. All prior cases were resolved without Ford admitting liability. Officials at Ford Motor Company’s corporate headquarters in Dearborn, MI, did not respond to a request for comment before the Crusader’s deadline.

  “I have pictures of me with my sage at work, praying,” Jenkins said. “I was crying almost every day.”