Execs at the Tokyo-based watch-maker Seiko are bigots — and oddly enough, it’s Japanese women that they’re prejudiced against, a Manhattan salesclerk alleges in a new, $10 million lawsuit.
Seiko sales associate and 25-year Queens resident Kaoru Parker says in her lawsuit that she was asked to “disappear” from the company’s new, Madison Avenue boutique whenever the company’s top stockholder, Etsuko Hattori, visited from Japan.
That’s because Hattori is “a mean, horrible, very difficult, prejudiced, racist and rude person,” who harbors “deep-seated and harsh prejudice against Japanese female Seiko employees,” the saleswoman says her Japanese higher-ups in the US headquarters in Mahwah, NJ warned her.
Hattori is known to berate and fire Japanese women on the spot and for no reason, Parker said the execs explained in telling her to stay home — for her own good — when Hattori visited, her lawsuit says.
“Ms. Parker could not help but wonder what the reaction of New Yorkers would be if an African American or Hispanic female employee were ordered not to go to work in New York City due to the racist and/or sexist beliefs of some ‘important person’ who also had the power to fire employees at will,” the lawsuit says.
When she took a job last year at the fancy Madison Avenue boutique, she assumed that being both Japanese and bi-lingual would be viewed as an asset, her lawsuit says.
“She eventually learned the cruel irony that her status as a bilingual Japanese woman would mean that she would have no opportunity to succeed and advance within Seiko.”
The lawsuit continues, “Ms. Parker could not believe that in 2014 an employer based in New York City would have the audacity to order an employee not to report to work because an important person within such company was racist and sexist.”
Parker is still clinging to her job, but wants the wealthy watch conglomerate to pay $10 million “so that they will take note,” says her lawyer, Christopher Brennan.
“There was an assumption by the executives that because she was a woman she would adhere to certain cultural assumptions — that she would just go along with it and not raise a fuss and do as she was told,” the lawyer said. “But Ms. Parker is a New Yorker — and they insulted her dignity as a Japanese woman.”
In addition to Hattori, the lawsuit names as defendants her son, Shinji, who is Seiko’s president and CEO. Defendant Seiko Corporation of America said in a statement Wednesday, “The events described by Ms. Parker are at odds with the facts as we know them. Seiko is committed to diversity and we have anti-discrimination policies in place to support all of our employees, including Ms. Parker. We expect the legal process will show that her claims are without merit.”