The procedures the EEOC sets up attempt to resolve problems at the lowest possible level and cost to all parties. Here is how a large employer in Sidney handles this process.
Despite having many opportunities to investigate and correct complaints of gender discrimination, equality of pay and opportunity, the employer decided to brand the female employee as a problem child, wrote her up several times, including a special re-write up at her annual evaluation because a policy in HR said it had to be done (no such policy existed at the time).
Our employee was ostracized and badgered by multiple levels of management, told she had no leadership competencies, was told things that frankly are beyond the pale that a supervisor should never say to an opposite sex employee. All of this is contemporaneously documented in email, journals and other at the time documentation. The big nasty company will not be able to refute any of the facts.
When she quit the company for her own piece of mind and mental health, she was unable to even think about work for more than a month. She did the right thing and filed her EEOC complaint with the state of Nebraska and crossfiled her complaint with the Federal EEOC. The process involved when a complaint is filed is that the information is taken from the complainant (her) and presented to them (the big nasty employer) with options. One of those options is to try mediation. Our big nasty company said they were interested in mediation.
Bargaining in good faith, our girl says she would be interested in mediation and offered a common sense solution, including back/front pay for salary and bonuses missed, promotions skipped over and a commitment for the big nasty company to live up to its core values document and its employee handbook and train people to recognize gender bias, discrimination and harassment practices (all of which are currently eligible for first offense termination under big nasty company rules). The EEOC mediator in Kansas City presented the common sense solution to the big nasty company and a week later our girl received word from the EEOC office that the big nasty company was suddenly no longer interested in mediation and wanted to proceed to investigation. Bully for them and bully for our girl.
You see... the big nasty company said they were interested in mediation because they only wanted to see if the girl would be bought off cheaply.. It takes just a few thousand dollars to respond to the complaint in legal fees, so if our girl had said yes and been willing to sell her pain and anguish cheaply, the big nasty company might have said.. ok. But asking to be paid the same as men in her department for doing the EXACT SAME WORK was too much for the big nasty company to do and rather than do the right thing, they used the EEOC procedure to delay and be dishonest with a federal agency and our victim of discrimination.
Where does that leave us now.... in a good place we think. The big nasty doesn't know what and who we know that knows all the big nasty policies and how "problem people" are dealt with by them. One such remedy had the HR Director state in a mixed manager meeting that he would hire a woman to pick a fight with a claimant just to fire them both for cause. Potential witnesses are already being tampered with in intimidating ways that are also violations of company policies. One such occurrence happened last week when a mid-level manager told belittled someone in a meeting with representatives from other departments, diminishing the woman's stature and position as someone of value.
The day of reckoning is coming for the big nasty company. When it is all said and done a complete detail of the facts, names and dates and times will be published herein as a beacon to all the women who work for the big nasty company to let them know that even though they may be just one woman against a very large company, they are not alone and there is hope.
I will be presenting various tips and tricks to all interested readers out there who think they have been harmed by the big nasty company. Let me know your circumstances and you can remain anonymous. I promise that I will do all I can to get you to the right help. Whatever you do, do not talk to your HR department at the big nasty company until you have spoken to a trusted family friend or attorney. If you go the big nasty HR, they will use it to harm you. Big Nasty HR is not there for you. They are there for Big Nasty...
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