A Baton Rouge company will pay a former worker $50,000 to settle a federal lawsuit after the worker complained of being racially harassed and receiving a death threat while working as a technician at the Ash Grove Cement Plant in Foreman in early 2010.
U.S. District Judge Susan Hickey approved a consent decree Monday in a case filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against MMR Constructors Inc. The decree also directs the company to conduct racial-discrimination prevention training for all management employees at its Baton Rouge and Arkansas locations.
Pamela Dixon, a senior trial attorney for the commission, said Monday that reaching terms in a court decree didn’t come as a surprise.
“The majority of the lawsuits the EEOC brings are resolved through a settlement,” Dixon said, adding that the training requirement is routine in such cases.
Monday’s decree specifies that it doesn’t constitute a finding on the merits of the case or an admission by MMR to the allegations. It describes the agreement as a way to “avoid the additional burden, delay, expense and uncertainty that continued litigation of this case would involve.”
Telephone messages seeking comment from MMR weren’t returned Monday.
MMR provides electrical and instrumentation construction, maintenance and technical services to the oil and gas, manufacturing, chemical and power generation industries in the United States and 27 other countries, according to its website.
According to a Sept. 28, 2012, filing in U.S. District Court in Texarkana by the commission, former MMR employee Todd Mosely, who is black, filed a complaint with the commission accusing MMR employees working at the Ash Grove Cement Plant of creating a hostile work environment involving racially offensive language and graffiti. The suit said that two white MMR employees “appeared at Mosely’s in the middle of the night and threatened to kill him if [he] filed any more racial harassment complaints.”
The commission said in its suit that Mosely reported the threat, but MMR took no action because the altercation didn’t occur at the work site.
Mosely began working for MMR in October 2008 and was assigned to the Ash Grove plant as a start-up technician in August 2009. He left the company in January 2010.
In its lawsuit, the commission accused MMR of engaging in unlawful employment practices that included subjecting Mosely and other black workers to racially offensive comments and graffiti, depriving them of equal opportunities and adversely affecting their status as employees.
In the consent decree approved by Hickey, Mosely will receive $4,900 in back pay and $45,100 in “interest and non-pecuniary compensatory damages.” The decree also directs MMR to give a neutral reference for Mosely to any potential employers seeking a reference.
Dixon said the terms of the decree involved only Mosely because the other employees mentioned in the lawsuit didn’t take an active role in the case.
Business, Pages 21 on 01/28/2014