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Chapter Six Sex Discrimination, Sex Harassment, and Other Forms of Discrimination

Sex discrimination law encompasses many facets. The law mandates equal pay for equal work. It requires equal treatment, policies, standards, and practices for males and females in all phases of the employment relationship, including hiring, placement, job promotion, working conditions, wages and benefits, layoffs, and discharges. For example, it is generally discriminatory in all states and under federal law to:

• Refuse to hire women with preschool-age children while hiring men with such children
• Require females to resign from jobs upon marriage when there is no similar requirement for males
• Include spouses of male employees in benefit plans while denying the same benefits to spouses of female employees
• Restrict certain jobs to men without offering women a reasonable opportunity to demonstrate their ability to perform the same job adequately
• Refuse to hire, train, assign, or promote pregnant or married women, or women of childbearing age on the basis of sex
• Deny unemployment or seniority benefits to pregnant women, or deny granting a leave of absence for pregnancy if similar leaves of absence are granted for illness
• Institute compulsory retirement plans with lower retirement ages for women than men

Numerous cases of women winning large verdicts for sex discrimination have been reported recently. For example, Chevron reportedly agreed to pay more than $8 million to settle a class action filed by 777 female employees who claimed they were discriminated against in terms of pay, promotions and assignments. A New Jersey judge upheld a $7.1 million sex discrimination jury verdict against a company after the plaintiff successfully alleged that senior managers removed her from accounts she had helped build and gave them to male brokers. After 12 years with the company, the woman was accused of poor productivity and fired. The verdict included a $5 million punitive damages award.

Publix reportedly agreed to pay $81.5 million to settle a class action lawsuit by 150,000 women who accused the big grocery chain of relegating them to dead-end, low paying jobs. The settlement applies to all women who worked at any of the 535 Publix stores in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama since 1981. The suit was brought in 1995 by eight women who accused Publix of passing them over for raises and repeatedly denying them management jobs. They and four others who quickly joined the case said they watched as men with less experience and less seniority got promotions. Some said their requests were met with unwanted sexual advances from managers. The EEOC later joined the suit, and it was expanded to a class action covering past and current employees.

Although the Publix settlement is the largest involving supermarket chains, Lucky Stores allegedly paid $107 million to 14,000 women to settle similar allegations, and Albertson's allegedly paid a $29.4 million settlement to women and Hispanic workers. It was also reported that Safeway Stores settled for $7.5 million in a 1994 sex discrimination suit covering 20,000 employees in California.

$250 million was reportedly paid in 1992 in a suit against State Farm for a class of women who said they were denied or deterred from positions as insurance agents. And Home Depot faces a similar challenge from more than 200,000 current and former female employees who filed a class action lawsuit claiming the company's personnel structure is set up to limit their access to sales jobs, supervisor and manager positions. The lawsuit claims women are placed in positions with fewer opportunities while men are given jobs with greater advancement potential. The suit also alleges a pattern of sexual harassment and unequal pay. The case is currently proceeding to a jury trial.

This chapter will tell you about sex discrimination and other forms of discrimination. You will learn what practices are illegal, when you have been victimized, and how to take proper steps to protect and file a valid claim. For example, if you are being forced to work in a hostile and offensive environment, you will learn why it is best to send letters to the company to document the offensive conduct.

When a recently fired female employee consults the author in his New York City office, one of the first points to be considered is whether she has a valid claim of illegal treatment. For example, assuming equal work, did the company pay the same salary and benefits to her as it did for similarly-situated men? Was the female employee fired suddenly because of excessive absences and lateness while a male employee was not? Was an elderly female sales employee the first to go because of a slipping sales quota?

Recognizing and fighting back against job discrimination is not always easy. For instance, suppose a company fired a 60-year-old salesperson because she wasn't meeting quota. That sounds like a legitimate reason, right? Maybe, but what if the company's sales were down in many of its territories? Were the younger, male salespeople fired as well, or were they merely given a warning and placed on probation?

Suppose a female worker was fired for lateness. Were male workers with the same record of absences and lateness merely warned and not fired? Was the female employee fired in retaliation for complaining that she did not receive the same benefits as her male counterparts? In these examples, illegal discrimination may have occurred and should be redressed. (Author's Note: Although this chapter stresses gender-based discrimination problems, other forms of discrimination, including age, race, national origin, disability, and religious discrimination are also discussed, since many women who assert sex discrimination claims also allege other forms of discrimination in their complaint. Often the discrimination asserted by female workers is not based on sex at all but falls into one of these other categories.)