EEOC Sues Tire Company with Lone Female Employee

While many of the country's leading companies make a highly visible effort to welcome and encourage diversity, some companies seem stuck in the past. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently sued Mavis Discount Tire, a company that sells automobile parts and services. According to the lawsuit, Mavis hired 1,300 new managers, mechanics and tire installers over a three-year period -- and not a single one of those new hires was a woman.

The EEOC alleges that out of 800 people working in those positions since 2008, only one was a woman, even though there were women applicants who were better qualified for the positions than the men who were hired. The EEOC is suing for past and future wages for all the female applicants who were discriminated against in the company's hiring decisions and is also suing for injunctive relief.

The federal government aggressively pursues companies that have violated Title VII and other anti-discrimination laws. “The EEOC is uniquely positioned to challenge systemic hiring discrimination,” the EEOC's general counsel said. “Where necessary, we are prepared to use litigation to hold employers accountable for depriving qualified applicants of job opportunities, simply because of their sex.”

One of the trial attorneys on the Mavis case said, "Evidence of sex discrimination doesn’t get much starker than having just one woman employee out of eight hundred." While this may be an unusually extreme case, subtle forms of discrimination that are more common in the workplace or during interview screening can also run afoul of anti-discrimination laws. WeComply's online workplace discrimination training course gives employees the information they need about the law, while encouraging a corporate culture that embraces diversity. 

Categories: Discrimination & Harassment Compliance
Tags: workplace discrimination, Employment Discrimination