Lawsuit?

[ravan]

One of my former coworkers is encouraging me to sue, based on discrimination. I might have a case:
1) they lowballed the (informal) offer when they supposedly wanted to bring me permanent (even the gal that I first worked for there said it was an insult).
2) they said they'd get back to me once they had a "job description" (the initial offer was for a junior developer).
3) when they came up with a job description they used it to hire, permanent, TWO younger, ablebodied, males.
4) the day that I was sacked, they had announced that the only other female in my group was leaving.
5) they had a female build/release contractor, very senior, and treated her like a flunky. They let her go after she had to take extensive family leave over the holidays.
6) There are now only three women in all of engineering, and two of them are in the desktop area. Most of the women are in marketing, sales, ops, qa, and administration.

What do you think? I'm wondering if maybe even they slight sniff of a lawsuit would have them quaking in their boots... :-D

Comments

[law-witch.livejournal.com]

It is defiantly worth calling the board of equalization and some rights groups to check.

So far it DOES quack like a duck!

[mlion.livejournal.com]

Heh. Call up your board/bureau of Labor/Industries, and talk to them; the one here in Oregon is very helpful in cases like this... Sounds to me like you've got a good case.
And it sounds like they need to be quaking in their boots.

[dubhain.livejournal.com]

What the lady with the gun said. ;)

[jilara.livejournal.com]

Wow, this sounds like Mama Motorola. When I left, I think there were 3 or 4 sex discrimination suits in the courts (working on year 3 and 4 of dragging on, when I left), and of course the pee-test one (I think that mandatory drug testing was ultimately declared illegal in California). Unfortunately, it didn't seem to intimidate them much. (But then, this was the company who threatened to fire me after I finally blew, one day, over being searched every day as I came INTO - not out of - the plant.) This was the same place where my boss patted me on the head, several female engineers quit in anger, and a male tech writer, much more junior, was promoted over me, because "he looks more like a senior tech writer." (I threatened a suit on that one, and they decided to promote me, after all, because there were four male witnesses on my side.)

One hopes things have changed enough since the '80's to make companies more responsive.

[jemyl.livejournal.com]

Check with your local EEOC board. They will tell you if you have a case. It sounds like discrimination on both gender and disability, but they will be able to tell you just which laws have been broken etc. You might also check with the ACLU. If they get interested it gets big, fast. Sadly, most companies are well aware of the law and will skirt the very edge of it without going over. This one sounds as if they have gone over. There is also a trend in corporations for them to fire or lay off or otherwise force to quit women who are in their 40's and 50's because the insurance companies have shown that that group of women generally use more sick days and cost the insurance company more due to feminine problems and surgeries. They may also have discovered that they were violating Federal Law by not offering you benefits after six months or a year if you were working over 37 hours a week. If you have the documentation, or can get it, to show a pattern of harrassment as well it will go a long way to discount their strategies.

My motherly advice is to check it out, but don't put all your eggs in that basket as even if you have a case it is likely to take years. The gal who was to come back that meant they had to get rid of me on my last working for others job, had a good case for religious descrimination and it took four years to come to court and a ruling and subsequent settlement.

Love you, Sweety, and remember, just as it's not nice to fool with Mother's nature, it is also not nice to F with her kids! Even if we don't get even, the Universe tends to do it for us with those who F with us like these jerks have done with you.

I thought you would like G'ma's thought about your being laid off. "Well, that runs in the family. She is much like her grandfather and her mother, neither of whom could stand to work around bureaucratic bullshit for long. She will find something better."