Lockheed to pay $2.5 mln discrimination settlement

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) has agreed to pay a former employee $2.5 million, more than any individual has received in the settlement of a racial discrimination case filed by the U.S. Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission, attorneys for the agency said on Wednesday.

Charles Daniels, 45, said he was called derogatory names and threatened by four co-workers and a supervisor between 1999 and 2001 when he worked as an aviation electrician for the company in Florida, Washington and Hawaii.

Daniels, who is black, said that when he complained about how members of his six-person team were treating him, company managers said, "That's just boys being boys, and that's the way it is here at Lockheed."

"It was pretty humiliating," Daniels told reporters at a briefing in Honolulu. "To get called names is going to anger you. It's going to upset you. And it makes you frustrated because you know what the law provides."

William Tamayo, regional attorney for the EEOC in San Francisco, said the settlement was also the largest ever to be publicly filed in Hawaii.

A spokesman for Lockheed Martin was not immediately available to comment.

(Reporting by Amanda Beck)