Toray Plastics America Retaliated Against Me For Reporting Two Workplace Shooting Threats
Below please find segment VII, dated 8-12-24, explaining the truth about why Toray Plastics America (TPA) sued me in December 2018 when they falsely claimed a common reader could identify TPA in my book, Successful Leaders Aren't Bullies, released September of 2018.
TPA terminated me in September 2017 in retaliation for sharing my TPA shooting threat investigation with a Japanese Toray Expat who requested it.
In May of 2017, after receiving my completed workplace shooting internal investigation, Toray American administrators sat on the report despite the glaring and obvious shooting threat it outlined, posed by angered workers and instigated by the abusive behaviors of the bullying manager at my plant.
When I was hired, two people reported to this manager. After three months, one resigned, stating they could no longer tolerate this manager's illegal actions towards workers during daily rounds. The person who resigned made constant respective reports to all their superiors, who did nothing.
After six (6) months of my being in my Toray Plastics America job, the other person who reported to this bullying manager was terminated, for failing to follow their manager's orders to demean and abuse workers.
Upon this person's termination, another employee stopped by my office claiming executives were worried this terminated worker might return to Toray with a gun. These same executives were sitting on my report, stating the bullying manager's behaviors could instigate a frontline worker shooting.
This motivated me to hand my report to then Toray Plastics America's president, who preached and encouraged open door policies. My sense was they would appreciate the information and stop the abuse. This expectation was naive, despite it being how all my other clients responded to comparable reports.
Instead, they gave me "thirty (30) days on the beach," a stern warning, and lecture on the importance of following the chain of command. I asked if I was being terminated. They said no, they liked my work, but wanted me to "think long and hard about what I wanted to do with my internal shooting investigation," or, in other words, the truth.
The US Occupational Safety and Health Act prohibits employers from retaliating against employees for exercising their rights under the act, such as raising a safety concern with their employer.
According to gun violence experts, soured workplace relationships, grievances in the workplace, or conflicts between its people, like those I witnessed at Toray Plastics, cause workplace mass shootings. FBI records show that in 49% of workplace shooting cases, the most common trigger was interpersonal workplace difficulties
It was also absurd for a company headquartered in Japan, given the torturous atrocities American Soldiers suffered by Japanese Military during World War II, to allow managers to torture current American workers at Toray’s American Plants.
Next: How I used my "thirty days on the beach to contemplate what I would do with the report."
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