The EEOC recently announced a favorable jury verdict of $756,000 in a religious discrimination lawsuit brought against AT&T Inc. on behalf of two male customer service technicians who were suspended and fired for attending a Jehovah’s Witnesses Convention.

The jury awarded the two former employees $296,000 in back pay and $460,000 in compensatory damages under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. During the four-day trial, the jury heard evidence that both men had submitted written requests to their manager in January 2005 for one day of leave to attend a religious observance. Both men had attended the convention every year throughout their employment with AT&T — Gonzalez worked at the company for more than eight years and Owen was employed there for nearly six years.

Read the full story here.

Caesars Palace will pay $850,000 to settle a sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit filed by the EEOC. The EEOC charged that the Las Vegas resort/casino’s Latina kitchen workers were subjected to repeated and sometimes severe sexual harassment. Read the full story here: http://www.eeoc.gov/press/8-20-07.html.

The suit claimed that male supervisors demanded that their female workers perform sex and other lewd acts with them or face being fired. The EEOC also charged that management failed to address and correct the illegal conduct, even though women complained about it. Further, the workers who complained were then retaliated against via demotions, loss of wages, further harassment, and more.

Caesars Palace has agreed to pay $850,000 to the employees identified by the EEOC to have been sexually harassed and further: “(1) to provide training to all employees in English or Spanish; (2) to provide semi-annual reports to the EEOC regarding its employment practices for a period of three years; and (3) to revise its employment policies and procedures to conform to its obligations under Title VII.”

The EEOC has received a favorable jury verdict of $166,500 in a disability harassment lawsuit brought against a Subway restaurant franchise on behalf of a female manager who was discriminated against and forced to resign because of her hearing impairment.

Read the full story here.

The Dallas jury of five women and two men awarded former area supervisor Tammy Gitsham $66,500 for lost wages and emotional harm and an additional $100,000 in punitive damages in the EEOC’s suit under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). The EEOC charged in the case that the Subway owner and one of his managers subjected Gitsham to a disability-based hostile work environment, including teasing and name-calling, because she is hearing impaired and wears hearing aids.

Since 1992, when the ADA’s employment provisions became effective, the EEOC has received more than 235,000 charge filings alleging disability discrimination, filed more than 700 ADA lawsuits, and obtained approximately $665 million in total monetary relief for charging parties.

The Baltimore Sun reports that an English teacher, Michelle Maupin, was awarded more than $235,000 last week in compensatory and punitive damages for harassment and retaliation during her time at Centennial High School. Read the full article here.

Maupin’s allegations stem from a turbulent period at Centennial when the school was rocked by grade-tampering investigations of two top administrators and allegations that the school was not welcoming to minorities. Maupin worked with the African-American Awareness club at the school.

“She had parents coming in saying, ‘I don’t think my child can succeed in your class’ after only one day of school,” Coyle said. “These complaints weren’t appropriate, and the administration should have stepped up and intervened on her behalf.”

Maupin’s attorney, Mike Coyle, said he was “extremely pleased” with the jury’s decision, given that his client had not been fired. “This is one of the larger awards I’ve seen for purely emotional stress,” Coyle said. The trial took seven days.

A South Lyon, Michigan, steel tubing company will pay $500,000 and implement injunctive relief to settle a race discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC had charged that Michigan Seamless Tube, after purchasing the assets of its predecessor company, refused to hire African American employees of the predecessor. Read the full story here.

According to the EEOC’s suit, Michigan Seamless began hiring former employees of the predecessor in November 2002. During the company startup, 52 of the former employees were hired — none of them black.

Michigan Seamless continued to hire former employees through 2005, but no African American employees of the previous company were ever hired. Many white employees hired had significantly less experience than the black former employees represented by the EEOC, and in some cases had actually been trained by the same African American employees who were denied hire. The EEOC asserted that Michigan Seamless’s conduct violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits race discrimination in employment.

Under the consent decree settling the suit, Michigan Seamless will pay $500,000, to be distributed to the class members based on an individualized determination. Michigan Seamless is also required to recruit black applicants by a variety of methods, and will provide training on anti-discrimination laws to all its employees, managers and executive officers.

According to a report on MSNBC, The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) reports that they are seeing more complaints, and more suits filed, on behalf of pregnant women who have been discriminated against.

“The increase in pregnancy discrimination charge filings and lawsuits is cause for concern,” says David Grinberg, a spokesman for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Such charges filed with the EEOC, state and local agencies jumped nearly 19 percent to a record 4,901 last year, from 3,977 in 1997. And, he adds, “pregnancy discrimination lawsuits by EEOC have increased about threefold from six or fewer per year in the early to late 1990s, to 16 or more per year since 2001.”

Not only are women being discriminated against by not being hired or being fired because of pregnancy, but one of the biggest issues is how much time an employee can take after the baby is born.

Under the Family and Medical Leave Act, workers who are employed by firms with 50 employees or more and have worked for a company for at least 12 months have to provide 12 weeks of unpaid leave to employees for medical reasons including pregnancy and the birth of a child.

Often disputes arise when employers either don’t honor that or employees take more than 12 weeks, only to find their job has been given away.

If a pregnant woman is treated differently than other workers due to her pregnancy or recent childbirth, then she might have a discrimination claim. Educating employees about discrimination in the workplace is the only way to make all staff aware of the wide variety of ways in which they might discriminate against, or be discriminated against.

“Several high-profile companies, from Coca-Cola to Wal-Mart, have been hit with discrimination lawsuits, which has sensitized big business to the cost of not addressing diversity issues.”

The Miami Herald published an article Monday about companies in South Florida working to attract a more diverse workforce. Read the full article here.

Promoting and embracing diversity in the workplace will yield any organization a variety of benefits. Diversity will help by bringing a range of ideas, approaches, and views to the table when performing tasks and problem solving.

Diversity also brings new and innovative products and services to your organization by focusing on different customers. It allows you to think in terms of a wider customer base and a wider employee base.

Reading this article brought to mind the challenging task that each organization faces when creating and putting into action a Diversity Implementation Plan (DIP). As we discuss in our Diversity and Discrimination training course, part of any good DIP is recruitment and retention of diverse employees.

Every organization should desire to recruit a diverse staff. This includes taking advantage of alternative recruiting areas, in addition to the Internet you should consider minority owned and operated newspapers, radio stations, etc. This will help lead you to specialized prospects.

After you have acquired a diverse employee you want to retain them as well. Here are some ideas for aiding in employee retention:

• Offer comprehensive orientation training
• Have an open-door policy in order to foster an inclusive environment
• Provide training and development to your employees (reinvest in their capabilities)
• Offer alternative benefits (flexible work hours or performance incentives
• Provide mentoring, guidance helps them before more effective and efficient

Diversity not only increases morale and loyalty within you organization, but will also help reduce legal fees and charges over time. Start working on your own Diversity Implementation Plan soon.

From The Messenger (3/30/07):

A federal agency is claiming that management at the Fort Dodge Georgia Pacific plant failed to protect a woman from sexual harassment there.

The woman’s supervisor didn’t take action on complaints that she was subjected to indecent exposure, groping and threats of rape, a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court alleges.
…

EEOC attorneys said that the key fact in the suit is the alleged inaction of the supervisor.

“That just invites harassment to spread through the work force and compounds the risk that an employer is going to be incurring a major financial loss.”

The all-too-common issue we’re dealing with here is a failure in Prompt Prevention on the part of Georgia Pacific’s supervisors. By law, employers must promptly investigate claims of inappropriate employee behavior immediately, or be subject to hefty penalties.

The precedent-setting case law in Prompt Prevention comes from Pennsylvania State Police vs. Suders, from 2004. In summary, Suders was hired to work in the barracks of the state police. While in the barracks, she was subjected to a continuous barrage of sexual harassment. The Pennsylvania State Police had a formal mechanism for sexual harassment reporting, but they didn’t use this mechanism or do anything about it. So, the importance of the precedent set here is that employers must work very hard to prevent harassment or risk being held liable. They must do everything within their power to prevent harassment from taking place. They must be proactive in stopping the harassment, respond to harassment claims when they occur immediately, and maintain an environment that is free from harassment.

Beyond the organizational liabilities you may expect, the supervisor(s) that failed to respond in the Georgia Pacific case may be held personally liable as well. A civil suit may be brought up against these men or women for not taking corrective action. Lastly, let’s not forget the permanent marks on their reputations that will follow them through their careers.

How could this been handled differently?

With proper education and training on the responsibilities of managers to respond to and report harassment, perhaps these supervisors would have taken appropriate action. Additionally, Georgia Pacific would have a stronger affirmative defense by being able to prove that these managers were trained on these issues.

As a special treat to our readers, courtesy of Articulate who was kind enough to give it an award, Ah-Ha! Media’s “Laws and Cases of Sexual Harassment” module is available for public viewing here. In this module you will find the issue of Prompt Prevention addressed in greater detail.

From AFP on Breitbart (3/14/07):

A record number of men reported being sexually harassed in the workplace last year, according to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Newly released data from the EEOC showed that 15.4 percent of the 12,025 charges of sexual harassment in fiscal year 2006 were filed by men, as opposed to 11.6 percent a decade ago.

You may have already guessed it, but many of the harassment claims filed by men are under the category of “same-sex harassment.” Since the case of Onacle v. Sundowner Offshore (1998), same-sex harassment has been held as a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Taken from one of our training modules on the Laws & Cases of Sexual Harassment:

“The precedent set here deals with same-sex harassment. Onacle was employed to work on an off-shore oil rig drilling in the Gulf Coast. During his time on the rig, Onacle was threatened with same-sex assault by his supervisor and coworkers. These were heterosexual men who were trying to sexually assault him. The precedent that was set with this case was that sexual harassment goes beyond what is viewed as more traditional form of harassment, men harassing women. Covered under the Title VII Civil Rights Act, the laws protecting sexual harassment extended to same-sex harassment. This means that men can be held accountable for harassing men and women can be held liable for harassing women. This also does not mean that same-sex harassment is homosexual in nature. So, through this precedent, the definition of sexual harassment became broader.”

When reading into the above statistics on same-sex harassment, one could also argue that through training and educational programs employees are more likely to report harassment. When rolling out a training program to one of our clients, we always make them aware that the number of complaints will intially increase. This may seem counter-intuitive (isn’t training supposed to decrease complaints?) but what’s actually happening is that prior to the training, those harassed individuals did not feel comfortable making a claim or did not know the proper channels to go through.

When training brings these claims to the surface, the employer has the benefit of being able to address these immediately in the workplace, rather than waiting until later – in the courtroom.

From the Kane County Chronicle – IL (3/10/07):

Motorola Inc. has settled a gender discrimination lawsuit with a former top female executive, days before the company’s chief executive was slated to testify in the trial.

In the lawsuit, [Theresa] Metty claimed that she felt she had to “act like a man” to keep her job working for the world’s second-largest cell-phone maker. At the same time, she alleged, she was criticized for having what was deemed a “male-like” management style.

Motorola had said Metty’s claims of discrimination were groundless and that women held high leadership positions in the company.

Though Motorola may have women holding high leadership positions in the company, this case may shed light on how the company values diversity in leadership styles. Leaders should be evaluated on their performance, not whether or not it fits an expected management style.