Illegal activities of Southern Bosses for the weeks between Friday, August 9, and Friday, August 23
Mississippi Killers
The U.S. Department of Labor has reached a settlement agreement with a Hattiesburg poultry processing plant that requires the company to pay $164,814 in fines and implement enhanced safety measures to protect their employees from well-known machine hazards.
The agreement follows an investigation by the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration into the failure by Mar-Jac Poultry to use required safety procedures that would have kept a teenaged worker from being fatally caught in a machine as they cleaned it in July 2023.
In addition to abating all violations cited by OSHA, Mar-Jac Poultry MS LLC must implement the following enhancements:
- Add another properly trained supervisor to the sanitation shift.
- Provide workers exposed to lockout/tagout and machine guarding hazards with updated training.
- Require the plant’s manager and safety director to complete OSHA’s 30-hour general industry training and plant supervisors to complete OSHA’s 10-hour training.
- Institute a system for assigning, identifying and issuing locks to authorized employees performing lockout/tagout functions and update programs and training to reflect this requirement.
- Conduct a risk and hazard assessment to evaluate the safety exposures and hazards associated with current lockout/tagout procedures for the sanitation shift. The assessment must include a review of any incidents, including near misses, injuries and unexpected start-ups or malfunctions of machinery.
- Perform monthly lockout/tagout safety audits for the sanitation shift for one year and provide proof to OSHA, including what steps the employer is taking to reduce hazards in response to the audits.
“Tragically, a teenage boy died needlessly before Mar-Jac Poultry took required steps to protect its workers,” said OSHA Regional Administrator Kurt Petermeyer in Atlanta. “This settlement demands the company commit to a safer workplace environment and take tangible actions to protect their employees from well-known hazards. Enhanced supervision and increased training can go a long way toward minimizing risks faced by workers in meat processing facilities.”
Georgia Discriminators
Pilot Air Freight, LLC, an international freight shipping and logistics company, will pay $400,000 and provide other relief to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today.
The EEOC alleged in its lawsuit that, in early June 2019, Thomas Hunt informed his manager that he needed to request leave to see his doctor about some biopsy results. About 10 days later, Hunt was terminated by Pilot, allegedly as a result of a reduction in force. Pilot claimed that Hunt was laid off because he had less tenure than other employees and his position was eliminated. However, in the months leading up to and following Hunt’s discharge, Pilot hired several employees who were not discharged based on tenure and hired an employee in a position very similar to the one that Hunt previously held, and with a higher salary.
Such alleged conduct violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of known or perceived disabilities. In 2021, the EEOC filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its administrative conciliation process.
Under the one-year consent decree resolving the lawsuit, Pilot will pay $400,000 in monetary damages to Hunt; train its employees on the ADA; maintain certain anti-discrimination policies; post an employee notice; and allow the EEOC to monitor complaints of disability discrimination.
Employees with disabilities should be supported—not cast aside,” said Marcus G. Keegan, regional attorney for the EEOC’s Atlanta District Office.
Texas Retaliators
The U.S. Department of Labor has ordered the Southlake location of a national childcare provider to reinstate an employee and pay $43,295 in back wages and damages after the employer fired them for reporting concerns about unsanitary and unsafe conditions in the facility’s kitchen to Texas health officials.
An investigation by the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration found LSP Operations LLC, operating as Little Sunshine Playhouse Operations, retaliated against the employee for engaging in actions protected by the Food Safety Modernization Act. The Southlake location is a subsidiary of the privately owned, Little Sunshine’s Enterprises Inc. in Springfield, Missouri.
Specifically, the employee alerted the company and the Texas Department of Health and Human Services in August 2023 that the facility’s kitchen was not being cleaned overnight, an unsanitary area was used for food preparation and food was stored at unsafe temperatures. The employee told investigators they suffered severe rashes caused by the kitchen’s conditions.
“Our investigation found Little Sunshine Playhouse Operations punished an employee who reported unsafe and unsanitary conditions in the facility’s kitchen out of concerns for the health of infants, young children and staff,” said OSHA Regional Administrator Eric S. Harbin in Dallas. “Every employee has the legally protected right to warn others about safety concerns and the right to do so without fear of an employer’s retaliation.”
In addition to ordering Little Sunshine Playhouse to reinstate the worker and pay back wages and damages, OSHA directed the employer to pay $5,500 in attorney’s fees.
Dishonorable Mentions
- A subsidiary of Circle K could have prevented a store cashier in Orlando, FL from suffering a serious gunshot injury by following the company’s own established safety procedures, a U.S. Department of Labor investigation has found. The agency has proposed $16,131 in penalties, the maximum amount allowed by federal statute. The company has contested the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.
- A review of OSHA investigations of Circle K locations since 2014 finds five workers suffered fatal gunshot injuries at two locations in Texas in August 2021 and December 2018, Georgia in September 2019, Florida in June 2016 and Alabama in December 2015. The majority of these incidents took place in the evening or overnight hours.
- The U.S. Department of Labor has obtained a consent judgment in a Tennessee federal court that requires Luttrell Staffing in Kingsport, TN staffing agency to stop employing children illegally and forbids them from future violations of federal child labor laws. In addition to ordering Luttrell Staffing to comply with federal child labor regulations, the court ordered the employer to pay $121,572 in civil money penalties.
- ResourceOne, a Tulsa commercial printing, direct mailing and direct marketing company, will pay $47,500 and furnish other relief to resolve a harassment lawsuit filed by the EEOC that alleged a ResourceOne employee showed her supervisor results from an at-home DNA test kit indicating the employee’s ancestry from Cameroon and the Congo. Afterward, the supervisor repeatedly called her “ape” and “Congo.” The supervisor also mocked the employee, saying she was “swinging through the trees” and was an “ape princess” looking for a “king.” The employee asked the supervisor to stop but the harassment continued, the EEOC said. When the employee complained to a higher-level manager, he asked the employee if she preferred to be called “ape” or “Congo” and did nothing to stop the supervisor’s conduct. The EEOC charged the harassment was so intolerable the employee resigned. Following the employee’s forced resignation, the supervisor obtained her phone number and sent her a text message calling her “Congo,” the EEOC charged.
- Buffalo Wild Wings in Douglasville, GA, violated federal law when it failed to hire a job candidate because of her religion, the EEOC charged in a lawsuit.According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, a server candidate for the Douglasville, Georgia location wore long skirts in public because of her sincerely held religious beliefs. Before she applied, the Douglasville general manager told the candidate at a social gathering that the restaurant was hiring, but also mocked her religious beliefs by throwing her arms in the air, chanting “na na na,” and asked her if she were Pentecostal. After the candidate applied, the restaurant did not interview her or otherwise contact her regarding the open position. The applicant’s daughter, who worked at the restaurant, followed up with an assistant manager on her mother’s behalf. The assistant manager told the candidate’s daughter that the restaurant would not hire her mother because it was unusual for servers to wear long skirts in a sports bar. The general manager then confirmed that she would not hire her mother, even though the restaurant was actively seeking servers at the time and restaurant hired five servers within two months, according to the EEOC’s suit.