Illegal activities of Southern Bosses for the weeks between Friday, November 22, and Friday, November 29
Mississippi Killer
The U.S. Department of Labor has entered into a settlement agreement with a Mississippi steel pipe manufacturer with a long history of safety failures to correct recent conditions that led to a 25-year-old employee’s fatal injuries in January 2024 in Bay Saint Louis.
An investigation by the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration found Jindal Tubular USA LLC had not established safe practices for storing and stacking pipes, resulting in a tragic incident where 2,000-pound pipes collapsed, fatally injuring one worker and causing life-altering injuries to a 20-year-old laborer, who subsequently lost both legs.
OSHA cited the company for failing to ensure stacked pipes were stable and secure against collapse. Inspectors also identified three repeat violations that included failing to provide machine guarding, inspect or test electrical insulating protective gloves periodically, and prevent slipping hazards. In addition, the company was cited for 26 serious violations that included failing to ensure guardrails or covers were in place at open pits to protect employees from fall hazards, allowing accumulation of combustible dust on surfaces and failing to label exit doors to facilitate safe egress in the event of a fire.
As part of the agreement negotiated by OSHA and the Office of the Solicitor, Jindal Tubular USA will withdraw its challenge to the citations and pay $442,815 in penalties. In addition, the employer is obligated to do the following:
- Hire a professional third-party consultant to develop a comprehensive safety and health program that the employer will implement within 30 days.
- Allow the consultant to conduct monthly worksite audits and provide copies of the audits to OSHA.
- Provide safety training to all stacking yard employees.
- Upgrade electrical wiring and components in combustible dust areas.
- Employ at least one dedicated safety and health professional who has completed a 30-hour OSHA safety course on each shift.
- Report work-related injuries and illnesses to OSHA on a quarterly basis for a period of three years and allow agency personnel to inspect without delay when a logged injury or illness occurs.
With the latest violations, Jindal Tubular USA has been cited for 46 OSHA safety violations in the last five years. The company manufactures and coats large diameter steel pipes at its 155-acre facility in Bay Saint Louis. Incorporated in 2014, the company has more than 400 employees.
Texas Discriminators
A federal jury has awarded $2 million in punitive damages against SkyWest Airlines, a Utah-based airline, and $170,000 for emotional harm to Sarah Budd, a female parts clerk, to settle a sex discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today. The verdict is the largest jury trial award ever obtained by the EEOC in the Northern District of Texas.
According to the EEOC, multiple coworkers and at least one manager made extremely crude sexual comments to Budd, including the suggestion that she should make money via prostitution. Male co-workers also made suggestions or requests that Budd perform demeaning sex acts, and made frequent jokes and remarks about rape and rape victims, including the statement that women who report rape do so for attention. The jury agreed that Budd, herself a survivor of sexual assault, experienced physical illness and intense mental anguish as a result of her work environment.
Budd reported the sexual harassment to her supervisor, who did nothing in response to her complaint. When Budd reported the sexual harassment to the employee relations department, the employee relations manager did not interview many employees identified as witnesses to and participants in the harassment or ask obvious follow-up questions. As a result, the investigation did not uncover the full extent of the harassment. Although SkyWest promised to discipline participating coworkers and provide department-wide training, the discipline was superficial and SkyWest canceled the training after Budd retired, deciding that it was no longer necessary. SkyWest conducted training three years later, and only in response to litigation, the EEOC said.
The EEOC filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division, after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process.
The Dallas jury of ten returned a unanimous verdict finding that SkyWest Airlines subjected Budd to a hostile work environment based on her sex and that the company knew or should have known of the harassment but failed to take prompt remedial action. The jury did not find Budd had also been retaliated against when she was placed on indefinite administrative leave following her complaint, however.
The monetary judgement was reduced to $300,000 based on Title VII’s statutory caps applicable to compensatory and punitive damages.
Georgia Discriminators
Total Systems Services, LLC, a global payments processing company based in Columbus, Georgia, will pay $65,000 to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today.
The EEOC’s lawsuit charged that from May through August 2020, a customer service representative with a disability who worked in a Total Systems call center repeatedly requested remote work as a reasonable accommodation because of her high-risk status with respect to COVID-19. At the time, the employee’s call center co-workers were regularly testing positive for the virus, the EEOC said.
On the advice of her doctor, the employee requested remote work after a May 2020 workplace COVID-19 exposure. Total Systems denied the employee’s reasonable accommodation request based on criteria that applied equally to all customer service representatives seeking to work remotely instead of engaging in an individualized assessment of the employee’s disability-related needs, as required by the ADA. To avoid further exposure—and the increased risks she faced if she contracted COVID-19—the employee went on medical leave. The company again denied her request for remote work, and she was required to return to in-facility work even though many other employees in her department had transitioned to remote work. Total Systems continued to deny the employee’s reasonable accommodation request and the employee was forced to resign in August 2020 to ensure her own safety, the EEOC said.
The EEOC filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division. Under the two-year decree resolving the lawsuit, Total Systems will pay $65,000 in monetary damages to the former employee; implement an ADA compliance policy and distribute it to all employees; provide annual training to its U.S. managers and human resources personnel on the ADA; and allow the EEOC to monitor how it processes future ADA accommodation requests.