Gonnella Baking Co., a Chicago-area baking company, will
pay $350,000 to settle a national origin harassment and retaliation
suit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
(EEOC), the agency announced today. The company will also be subject
to a four-year consent decree, under which it will be required to
report any further complaints of discrimination or retaliation to the
EEOC and to provide training about employment discrimination law to
its managers and other employees.
In its suit, the EEOC charged that Gonnella tolerated harassment of
employees of Mexican national origin by a manager at its Aurora, Ill.,
facility and, when a number of those employees complained about the
harassment, the manager retaliated against them by subjecting them to
further verbal harassment, longer hours, and harsher working
conditions. The EEOC sought relief for a class of seven employees,
four of whom intervened in the suit as plaintiffs.
John Rowe, EEOC district director in Chicago, said that the EEOC’s
investigation revealed that the Gonnella manager routinely made
derogatory anti-Mexican comments to several sanitation employees of
Mexican national origin. After some of these employees complained
about the mistreatment, the manager required the employees to work
longer hours, with a number of shifts exceeding 12 hours and on one
occasion reaching as much as 19 hours, according to Rowe. According to
the employees, the manager warned them against making further
complaints, telling one employee that if the employee complained to
the company’s human resources department, she was “going to pay for
it.”
The EEOC’s lawsuit was brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, which prohibits national origin discrimination and
retaliation in employment. Harassment of employees or alteration of
the conditions of their employment is unlawful if it is motivated by
the employees’ national origin or race or if it is done in retaliation
for complaints about discrimination.
“The derogatory language and other harassment directed at the
employees in this case are entirely inappropriate in the workplace,”
said John Hendrickson, the EEOC’s regional attorney in Chicago.
“Gonnella failed to take action to address this conduct, despite
numerous complaints about this manager from several different
employees. As this case illustrates, employers who do not live up to
their obligation to put a stop to employment discrimination expose
themselves to substantial financial consequences and ongoing scrutiny.”
The EEOC’s lawsuit was filed on September 15, 2008, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (EEOC v. Gonnella Baking Co.,
Case No 08-cv-5240). The consent decree resolving the case was
approved today by U.S. District Judge John W. Darrah. The case had been
set to go to trial on April 12, 2010. In addition to requiring
Gonnella to pay damages to seven individuals and to pay attorney fees
to intervening plaintiffs, the decree contains an injunction
prohibiting Gonnella from engaging in further discrimination on the
basis of national origin, race, or retaliation.