A former employee has filed a discrimination complaint against MLS team Chivas USA, claiming any non-Latino employee was harassed and squeezed out of the club. This follows on the heels of two Chivas USA coaches filing a suit that made similar claims.
Cynthia Craig, Chivas USA's former human resources manager, says she was discriminated against because she couldn't speak Spanish, that all new hires were Latino, and she alleges illegal hiring practices:
Her suit also charges that, starting in January, Chivas hired four coaches from Mexico even though they were not authorized to work in the United States. According to the suit, Craig was told to add the coaches to the payroll but she refused, and team executives instead routed them money through other means.
Craig alleges that at one point, new owner Jorge Vergara held a staff meeting in Spanish, then said in English, "if you didn’t understand what I just said, then it is time for you to get a job down the hall [with the Galaxy]."
This is reminiscent of claims made by former Chivas USA youth coaches Ted Chronopoulos and Dan Calichman in their May lawsuit. They claimed Vergara said “if you don’t speak Spanish, you can go work for the Galaxy, unless you speak Chinese, which is not even a language."