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Kansas City-based Western Container settles suit with EEOC

Daily Record and the Kansas City Daily News-Press, Mar 31, 2008 by Aaron Bailey

A Kansas City carton and paperboard manufacturer will pay $126,250 to settle a federal employment discrimination lawsuit.

Attorneys for Western Container Co. and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a consent decree Thursday in federal court in Kansas City. The EEOC filed the suit on behalf of Keith Simmons in 2006.

The EEOC alleged the company's workers and managers violated federal law by subjecting Simmons, who is black, to harassment, including racial slurs and pictures, jokes and graffiti.

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"Allowing a negative racial environment to poison the workplace is a bad business practice," Jean P. Kamp, acting regional attorney for the EEOC's St. Louis office, said in a press release. "It harms the employees and ultimately will affect the company's bottom line. We are pleased that Western Container is taking steps to demonstrate a commitment to a workplace free of racism."

In addition to the financial payment, the settlement calls for Western Container to provide Title VII training to its managers and distribute anti-discrimination messages to its employees.

The lead defense attorney, Paul E. Donnelly, of Stinson Morrison Hecker, said the settlement made financial sense for Western Container.

"It was financially such an expensive piece of litigation for the company that we had to look at our options," Donnelly said. "But this in no way means the company admits any wrongdoing."

The consent decree must get court approval.

In another EEOC victory in Missouri, a Muslim woman who claimed she lost her job for refusing to go without her head scarf is being paid $65,000 by her old company.

Mariam Soultan worked for Client Services, a St. Charles collection company, for a few days last May. But when a supervisor told her she had to remove the scarf, she refused because of her religious beliefs, and says she then was fired.

Soultan was represented by Veronica Johnson, of the Howard & Johnson firm in St. Louis.

"Mariam is a woman of remarkable strength and remarkable faith," Johnson said Thursday. "She followed through with this to protect her rights, but also to make sure that other women and other employers would know that women can wear a head scarf in the workplace, and that your religious rights don't end at the workplace door."

In court filings, the company had argued that the woman resigned, and that she would not accept any accommodation short of an exemption from the company's dress code.

According to the EEOC, the agreement also requires the company to share a revised dress code policy with workers, saying it will accommodate religious beliefs, and to train managers on religious discrimination.

For two years, the company must tell the EEOC if employees make requests to accommodate religious beliefs under the dress code, and the company's response to such requests.

The company's attorney, Robert Stewart, of The Lowenbaum Partnership in Clayton, did not return a call.

In earlier court filings, Client Services had argued that religion was not a consideration in requiring Soultan to remove her head scarf. The company also said that it already had paid the woman what she could have earned from May 16 through Aug. 20, when it offered to reinstate her but she declined.

Kansas City-based Western Container settles suit with EEOC

Daily Record and the Kansas City Daily News-Press, Mar 31, 2008 by Aaron Bailey

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