Articles Posted in Sexual Orientation Harassment

A Patriot Contracting Superintendent subjected an employee to highly offensive racist and homophobic slurs—including the N word and “faggot”—and threats of violence, according to Charges of Discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) by two former Patriot employees. When the employee’s colleague stood up for the victim, the Superintendent retaliated against him, including forcing the colleague to perform work that was inappropriate and painful given his previously-disclosed status as a cancer patient, according to his own EEOC Charge.

Twenty-year-old “Kevin” (a pseudonym) had worked for Patriot as an excavator operator for five months when he was transferred to a Reno, Nevada job site supervised by a Superintendent in October 2023. This was one of his first full-time jobs, having graduated high school in 2021. “Martin” (also a pseudonym), a former law enforcement officer and highly experienced construction equipment operator, worked onsite under the Superintendent as well. As explained in the EEOC Charge he filed on March 6, 2024, when he came on board with Patriot, Martin—a valuable prospective employee who had years of relevant experience—had made clear to General Manager Ritchie Jensen that to accept the construction equipment operator position, Patriot would have to guarantee Martin wouldn’t be forced to work as a laborer. Martin had disclosed that he was a cancer patient, taking a daily medication to manage his cancer, which made laborer work painful and infeasible; he further disclosed that a preexisting knee condition also made such work unacceptable. Jensen guaranteed that Martin would only be required to operate construction equipment, not to perform a laborer’s manual work.

Unfortunately, as soon as Kevin moved to the Superintendent’s crew, the Superintendent  began making extremely offensive and upsetting anti-gay slurs and remarks. As outlined in Kevin’s EEOC Charge, on a near-daily basis, the Superintendent would use the slur “faggot”—saying “hello faggot,” “what a faggot,” and similar remarks to Kevin.  Before long, the Superintendent also targeted Kevin, a Native Hawaiian man, with egregious racial slurs—calling him slurs including N*****, monkey, and coon on a daily basis. The Superintendent behaved erratically and threateningly—displaying a gun to Kevin and his coworkers while announcing “this is for anyone that wants to fuck around”—and once placing Kevin in a chokehold with no warning.

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Friedman & Houlding LLP represents a transgender female (“Charging Party”), who has filed an EEOC Charge of harassment and retaliation against her former employer Veolia Nuclear Solutions (“Veolia”), a federally contracted company that carries out nuclear energy facility clean-up and waste removal, at its Richland, Washington location. As alleged in her EEOC Charge, Charging Party was forced to quit after filing a complaint of a hostile work environment with Veolia’s Human Resources department. Federal contractors are under a special duty to proactively abide by anti-discrimination laws. The OFCCP is responsible for enforcement.

As a technician at Veolia, Charging Party reported to a Project Manager (“Project Manager”) at the Richland project facility. The Project Manager directed gender-based harassment at Charging Party on an almost daily basis, likening transgender individuals to “freaks” and pedophiles, and when Charging Party later informed Project Manager of her impending gender transition, he intensified the harassment, taunting her with comments about “chopping off her pecker,” and telling her that her gender transitioning was a “mistake” she would regret.

In addition, Project Manager would regularly make bigoted comments, including comments about trans people, on speaker phone, in conversations he had with colleagues and project managers in other facilities, as well as to the then-Director of Technologies—knowing that others, including Charging Party could overhear. Charging Party felt persecuted for just being who she was, knowing that management condoned such vile harassment.

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