Paying for Employment Discrimination

For decades many employers have had to pay significant amounts of money to resolve EEO charges and lawsuits. But illegal employment discrimination continues to be expensive for employers, whether based on race, gender, age, disability, religion, or other factors. Some example of claims settled include the following:

• Target Corporation paid $95,000 to an employee with multiple sclerosis for refusing to transfer her to a vacant position because of her disability.
• The Stillwater Minnesota School District paid $1.12 million to settle age-bias claims for reducing early retirement incentives based on age.
• Verizon Communication settled a pregnancy bias case by paying $48.9 million for denying female employees leaves of absence for pregnancy and newborn care.
• Wal-Mart spent $315,000 to settle race and sexual harassment claims by five women at a Flordia store and now Wal-Mart is in the news again faced with yet another claim of workplace discrimination for women.
• Red Robin restaurant chain paid $150,000 to settle a religious discrimination suit filed by a food server fired for not concealing religious-faith tattoos.
• And the list goes on-and-on,

These examples illustrate that employers must constantly be aware of and address worker discrimination issues. As part of HR management, equal employment likely will be a major concern as more employees are added who are covered under various EEO laws and regulations and as we continue to downsize and force employees out due to economic conditions.

How do you handle layoffs, conduct terminations, perform disciplinary action, etc? It is imperative that all HR managers, staff managers and supervisors understand state laws and regulations to avoid discrimination lawsuits. All managers and supervisors should be properly trained on the current laws and regulations.