Dive Brief:
- A Michigan farming business will pay $40,000 to settle claims brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that the employer maintained a sexually hostile work environment at its Benton Harbor facility, the agency announced Thursday.
- EEOC sued Pero Family Farms Food Company, LLC, in June 2023, alleging that it allowed a male forklift driver to sexually harass and physically threaten a female co-worker with whom he had a prior relationship. After she unsuccessfully attempted to report the conduct, HR staff told the co-worker they could not act until she obtained a restraining order against the driver.
- Under the terms of the settlement, Pero Family Farms entered a three-year consent decree and agreed to revise its sexual harassment policies and conduct training. The company denied the allegations and further denied any violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
Dive Insight:
Harassment is unlawful under Title VII when it is severe or pervasive enough to create a work environment that would be intimidating, hostile or offensive to a reasonable person, according to EEOC guidance. An employer is liable for harassment by nonsupervisory employees or nonemployees over whom it has control “if it knew, or should have known, about the harassment and failed to take prompt and appropriate corrective action.”
In its case against Pero Family Farms, EEOC alleged that the harassed employee “repeatedly complained to and attempted to work with” company supervisors and HR personnel to address the driver’s harassment. The agency further alleged that although the supervisor promised to talk to the driver and occasionally counseled him, the counseling failed to stop the harassment.
The supervisor also attempted to stagger the employees’ schedules, EEOC claimed, but this also failed because the female employee would frequently encounter her harasser due to overtime work. After the employee said the driver threatened to burn her home and kill both her and her pet, EEOC alleged that she again attempted to report the conduct to HR but was told that Pero Family Farms could not act until she obtained a restraining order against the driver. She did so, and the company fired the driver before later deeming him eligible for rehire, per the suit.
“No employee should ever have to suffer from sexual harassment,” Dale Price, senior trial attorney at EEOC’s Detroit office, said in an agency press release. “It should never take a personal protection order to get an employer to act.”
Courts have previously maintained that isolated incidents or sets of incidents of harassment are not always indicative of a hostile work environment. In February, a Kentucky federal judge held that the lone Black member of a night shift crew who complained of hearing racist jokes and being addressed by a racial slur, among other claims, failed to show that the conduct was sufficiently severe and pervasive as to create a hostile work environment.