Dollar General Corporation will pay $70,000 and
provide other relief to settle a sexual harassment
lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, the store
manager at a Dollar General’s Red Banks, Mississippi, store subjected a female
sales associate to unwanted sexually laced comments, text messages, and
gestures. Although other female employees previously complained about the same
manager, the harassment continued. Dollar General continued to employ the
manager for several months after the sales associate’s initial complaint, the
EEOC said.
Such alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964. The EEOC filed the lawsuit in February 2017 in U.S.
District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi at Oxford after first
attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation
process.
Besides the
monetary relief, the consent decree:
· enjoins Dollar General’s
stores in the district of the Red Banks store from unlawful sexual harassment
in the future;
· requires mandatory sexual
harassment training, with civility and bystander intervention training, to all
employees, including the district manager, store manager, and assistant store
manager;
· requires annual training
for the store manager, district manager, regional directors and human resource
managers within the district of the Red Banks store;
· requires Dollar General to
notify the EEOC of future sexual harassment complaints; and
· requires annual reporting
to the EEOC during the decree’s 18-month term, to include reporting of future
sexual harassment complaints and training.
“While the recent #MeToo movement has shone a
light on the prevalence of sexual harassment in the workplace, the EEOC has
long remained on the front lines litigating these types of cases on behalf of
victims, including vulnerable women in low-wage industries such as the retail,
warehousing and food services industries in the South,” said an EEOC
attorney. “The EEOC will continue to bring these lawsuits. Employers who
allow their supervisors or managers to subject their employees to sexually
harassing behavior can expect that serious repercussions will
follow.”
Another EEOC representative added, “As we
have said time and time again, having an anti-harassment policy that looks good
on paper does not satisfy federal prohibitions against sexual harassment in the
workplace. In fact, in this day and age, one would expect a corporation as
large as Dollar General to already have such a firm policy in place and
seriously enforced. In addition to having an anti-harassment policy,
employers must also enforce it. An unenforced anti-harassment policy is tantamount
to having no policy at all.”
