Eight former employees from Ye’s company Yeezy, LLC are suing the company along with Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) and Yeezy’s former chief of staff Milo Yiannopoulos for unpaid wages, “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment,” and forced labor, according to the lawsuit filed Saturday and obtained by The Daily Beast.
The suit follows another filed earlier this year by former Ye personal assistant Lauren Pisciotta, who alleged in her suit that she was fired after Ye sent her sexual texts and videos.
The employees in the joint suit, half of whom are minors (with one as young as 14)—allege that in addition to not being paid for their work, they were subject to racial slurs and Black employees were called “slaves.” They also claim that the minors were exposed to pornographic material while working on Ye’s new adult-film and pornography venture Yeezy Porn, and that Ye’s team was “directly and personally aware” of said exposure.
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The employees state in the suit that Ye's wife Bianca Censori sent an employee a shared file of “hardcore” porn for the Yeezy Porn platform, and that photos from that file were “openly disseminated” in group forums with the underage workers. The employees also claim they were threatened with non-payment if they refused to sign NDAs.
Yiannopoulos took to Twitter on Sunday to call the lawsuit a “joke” and “the most dishonest thing I’ve ever seen filed with a court,” and yet still resorted to name-calling—describing the suit’s primary Plaintiff as “disgruntled, comically inept Black developer I call Hotep Susan who is mad he didn’t get chosen for a full-time Yeezy job.”
The lawsuit states that “Yiannopoulos, who is Caucasian, would use Black and Brown skinned emojis to communicate with Black and Brown members of the development team” and that in digital forums used by the remote-first workplace, “Some team members were called ‘slaves’ while another group chat referred to team members as ‘new slaves.’” The employees claim management had been made aware that they were not comfortable with the term, but the group names were not changed until one employee demanded it.
This isn’t the first time Ye has been accused of creating a hostile work environment for Black employees, as he was also sued this year by a former security guard at the rapper's private school Donda Academy, who claimed that Ye “subjected Black employees to less favorable treatment than their white counterparts” and allegedly fired a Black employee who wouldn't cut his dreadlocks to keep his job as directed by the rapper, according to the lawsuit via Page Six.
The newest suit states that the ex-employees “were forced to suffer severe psychological abuse and agony, and threats of financial injury,” and are now seeking back pay, damages, and covered lawyer fees, as decided by a trial by jury.
