Baltimore area grocer Mars Super Markets has agreed to pay $275,000 and change its hiring practices to settle a sex discrimination lawsuit, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Tuesday.
In a class action suit filed last September, the federal agency accused the 16-store chain of discriminating by failing to hire women as meat cutters. Mars refused to hire part-time deli clerk Gail Brown as an apprentice meat cutter at its Wise Avenue store because she is a woman, the lawsuit said.
Mars' chief executive officer, Christopher P. D'Anna, did not return a phone call Tuesday afternoon. Other executives were not available.
Under a consent decree filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court, the supermarket chain will pay Brown $118,000, including $23,323 in back pay, $76,677 in damages and $18,000 in attorney's fees. Mars also will pay $157,000 to five additional claimants, under the agreement. All five women, who were not employed by Mars, had applied for meat cutter jobs and were turned down because they are women, the EEOC said.
The 66-year-old family-run grocer with 16 supermarkets, mostly in Baltimore County, has agreed to offer meat cutter jobs to women denied those jobs between 2006 and 2008. The company also has agreed to maintain employment records as required under federal law and train managers in equal opportunity hiring practices, according to the settlement, which becomes final when U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz signs it.
"We're hopeful [the agreement] is going to have an impact on Mars' hiring practice and that they will be considering applicants without regard to sex and not taking into consideration ... stereotypes of females in nontraditional jobs," said Maria Salacuse, a senior trial attorney with the EEOC in Baltimore.
Salacuse said Brown had been hired at Mars' Wise Avenue store in November 2006 and later sought a transfer to a meat cutter job.
"She thought it would be a better-paying job ... but was given the runaround and ended up resigning after a while," Salacuse said. "It was clear to her she wasn't being taken seriously. We investigated and found out she wasn't the only one."
Salacuse said that after EEOC filed its lawsuit, Mars did hire a female meat cutter and also extended a job offer to Brown, which she rejected. Brown, who now lives in West Virginia, could not be reached Tuesday.
"It has been months of negotiating with Mars," Salacuse said. "There is some significant injunctive relief, training and changing job descriptions. We were happy Mars came to the table and considered our recommendations seriously and saw it was in their interest to resolve this."
She said the chain has agreed to modify its meat cutter job description to more accurately reflect the job duties and come up with a more defined process for hiring applicants and transferring employees. The company has agreed to post a notice in all its stores encouraging women who applied for or asked about transferring to a meat cutter job from the beginning of 2006 through last year to contact the EEOC about a potential job offer.
