(FinalCall.com)�General Motors (GM), the world�s largest automaker, and Xerox Corp., one of America�s leading office machine makers are both facing new rounds of bias claims from employees around the country who say racism and sexual harassment are still commonplace on the job, according to attorneys handling employee complaints.

On March 20, in the Wayne County Circuit Court, 50 workers filed a $7.4 billion class-action lawsuit against GM, alleging the automaker failed to prevent its employees from committing racial and sexual harassment at two facilities in Michigan. In addition to punitive damages, the suit seeks $10 million in compensatory damages from the automaker and hopes to pull as many as 450 additional workers into the suit.

In the Xerox allegations, Leeds, Morelli and Brown, a New York law firm, said about 30 complaints have been filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the past month from across the nation, and they expect 70 or more in coming weeks. They said a class action lawsuit is also possible.

"I think this is one of the most systematic and egregious types of cases of hostile work environment that I�ve seen in a major corporation like Xerox, which is ranked so highly as a diverse work force," said plaintiff�s attorney James Vagnini, in a published report.

Among the charges against GM, plaintiffs allege that a White job foreman wearing a Ku Klux Klan outfit in the workplace confronted two Black assembly line workers. The suit also alleges that hangman�s nooses were hung over or near the workstations of Black employees and that they and other plaintiffs, including Native Americans and Mexican-Americans, were subjected to racial slurs.

"I am the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and you niggers better get your act together," the foreman announced, according to the suit. Female employees allege they received threatening telephone calls and that complaints to supervisors and managers about the "hostile work environment" at the Michigan facilities failed to stimulate GM to take disciplinary or preventive action.

Supervisors are also accused of using derogatory terms such as "nigger" and "Buckwheat," according to Attorney Wallace Parker, who filed the suit

GM disputes that claim and, according to published reports, said it actively sought to address "a small number of unfortunate incidents" in Pontiac and to curtail harassment and discrimination whenever possible.

GM last year settled a similar case at a manufacturing plant in Linden, N.J., paying $1.25 million.

The largest corporate settlement to date in a racial discrimination case the Coca-Cola Co., agreement reached in 2000 to pay $156 million to as many as 2,000 current and former Black employees.

Among the chief complaints in the Xerox case lawyers contend:
� In Cincinnati, Ohio, small dolls depicting Blacks and "Afro-picks" hung from nooses in the workplace.

� Photographs of a Black female employee doctored by a White supervisor portraying her as a prostitute. The complaint alleges that the photo was repeatedly displayed in the workplace.

� A book with hundreds of offensive jokes and pictures was copied and bound on Xerox equipment by employees and distributed throughout the company.

Workers also assert a lack of promotional opportunity and equal pay.

A spokeswoman for the company rejected the charges. She said the law firm and the EEOC have not presented Xerox with new allegations of bias.

"We have a long-standing commitment to diversity and in our view that commitment has never been stronger,�� Xerox spokeswoman Christa Carone told reporters.