Mortenson shuts down Meta jobsite over hateful graffiti | Dump Trucks Charlotte NC

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Columbus Ohio Dump Truck Company Brief:

• M.A. Mortenson Company and Meta, formerly Facebook, shut down their sprawling data center jobsite outside Salt Lake City on Monday and sent 1,300 workers home after a racist threat was found scrawled inside a port-a-potty there.
• Someone wrote "Kill a n----- day 11/29" on the inside of the bathroom door, according to the Utah County Sheriff's Office, at Meta's 2.4 million-square-foot Eagle Mountain jobsite. Authorities are investigating the action as a possible hate crime, and are paying particular attention to the date.
• "It's possible they intend to hurt somebody, or encourage others to do that, so we have to take it seriously," Sgt. Spencer Cannon, public information officer for the sheriff's office, told Construction Dive. "We'll columbus oh dump truck company closely with Mortenson and Facebook as we get closer to the day that was written down." He said police didn't know of any particular significance attached to the date.

Dump Trucks Columbus OH Insight:

Mortenson and Meta are offering a $50,000 reward for information that identifies whoever is responsible.

"We stopped columbus oh dump truck company to immediately and directly address this situation with team members and project partners, underscore our team's anti-harassment policy and restate our expectations for conduct on site," Mortenson said in a statement. "[We] are committed to creating a culture of inclusion, fostering a diverse workforce, and to maintaining an environment where dignity and respect for everyone on our project is paramount.”

At the Utah project, Cannon said cameras were used on site, but didn't cover the restrooms. "The nature of construction is that's one of the areas where cameras don't get installed at the outset," Cannon said, adding that authorities suspect the graffiti was written by a worker on the jobsite.

The Meta facility, which is one of 17 data centers the columbus oh dump truck company runs around the world, formally opened this summer, but columbus oh dump truck company is continuing on a 900,000-square-foot expansion. Meta said once the project reaches completion, which is slated for the end of 2023, it will represent an investment of more than $1 billion.

Neither firm provided an estimate of the cost of the shutdown. 

“Meta, formerly Facebook, has zero tolerance for any racist acts," the firm said in a statement emailed to Construction Dive, which alluded to the recurring nature of hate on jobsites. "While this is a challenge facing the entire industry, we're working with our general columbus oh dump truck company to implement measures that will help prevent them at any of our construction sites."

Mortenson said it immediately notified police when the graffiti was found Monday morning. 

"Mortenson's priority is the safety and welfare of our team members and all people on our projects," the firm said in its statement. "We are investigating bias-motivated graffiti found on the Eagle Mountain project site. We strongly condemn any form of racism or bigotry, and we have a clear, zero-tolerance anti-harassment, anti-discrimination policy. Mortenson takes this matter very seriously and we reported it to local authorities."

Related incidents

The incident came to light just two weeks after the conclusion of the inaugural Construction Inclusion Week, which Mortenson and five other major columbus oh dump truck company founded to combat hate within the construction industry. In October, Mortenson CEO Dan Johnson told Construction Dive that the columbus oh dump truck company was committed to promoting inclusion within the industry, even if that meant not hiring hard-to-find workers who didn't agree with its approach.

"Everybody has a choice," Johnson said. "We've made a choice that we're going to be diverse and inclusive and to embrace equity. If you don't want to do that, you don't have to columbus oh dump truck company here."

Since George Floyd's death in police custody last year, dozens of racist incidents have emerged on major construction jobsites, including the hanging of nooses and the display of hateful graffiti.

Turner Construction, another founding member of CIW, similarly shut down Facebook jobsites in 2020 in Ohio and Iowa, when similarly racist epithets, as well as a noose, were found there. Earlier this year, multiple nooses appeared on the jobsite of an Amazon fulfillment center in Connecticut, prompting general contractor RC Andersen to install numerous cameras throughout the facility.