August 2010 Archives

The telecommunications company AT&T has agreed to pay $60,000 to a former employee in order to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit. Occupational Health and Safety News reports that the ADA lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleged that a man that used to work for AT&T was denied a similar job within the company because of his "insulin use" for type 2 diabetes.

The job applicant was reportedly applying to be a cable splicer technician for AT&T in Austin and had the necessary experience and expertise to perform the job. He had also safely performed a similar job for AT&T after he was diagnosed with diabetes. When this applicant was denied the job, EEOC stepped in and accused the company of violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

There are many public and private employers in the state of Texas that drug test prospective employees before they officially hire their employees. This is partially due to the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988, which states that any employer receiving federal grants or any form of federal money must have a drug-free workplace or else risk losing federal funding.

FindLaw states that the Drug-Free Workplace Act does not contain any provisions that specifically allow for workplace drug testing, but that the law instead requires federal government contractors and grantees to establish a drug-free awareness program for their employees. If a great number of employees have been convicted of criminal drug statues, then it can be concluded that the grantee has failed to make a good faith effort to provide a drug-free workplace, hence federal funding can be lost.

An Austin school district's former director of diversity and intercultural relations reached a settlement with the school board earlier this month, where the district will be paying $149,500 to the former employee after a wrongful termination dispute.

The Austin Statesman reports that the settlement money Margarita Decierdo will be receiving is equivalent to about a year's worth of pay and her attorney fees. The woman was a contract employee with the school district and was in the second year of her three-year contract with the district when she was terminated.

After multiple rounds of mediation, the two former nurses that filed a claim against Winkler County Memorial Hospital in Texas reached a settlement. The New York Times reports that the two nurses that were fired and criminally prosecuted for reporting allegations of improper medical treatment by Dr. Ronaldo Arafiles at the county hospital, will be splitting a $750,000 payment.

The nurses Anne Mitchell and Vickilyn Galle were acquitted of felony charges of misusing public information earlier this year. Their lawsuit, which named Dr. Arafiles and hospital administrator Stan Wiley as defendants in the suit, in addition to naming the county hospital as a defendant, stated that the two nurses had been subjected to vindictive prosecution and that they had been denied of their First Amendment rights.

An employee of Goodwill Industries has filed a lawsuit against the organization, claiming that the Caucasian janitorial workers are getting paid more than the janitorial workers of racial minorities. According to the Southeast Texas Record, the suit was filed on July 28 in the Jefferson County District court by Earnest Sennet, who was making just $6 an hour as a janitor at Goodwill.

In the lawsuit, Earnest Sennet alleges that he was supposed to be paid $11 an hour, as it reportedly says in his contract. However, the defendant in this case told the plaintiff that he would only be getting paid $6 per hour. The plaintiff is a minority male, but the lawsuit does not specify what his exact ethnicity is or when he started his employment at Goodwill.

The largest phone company in the United States has been hit with yet another lawsuit, this time it's over discrimination of age against the company's employees that are over the age of 40.

Reuters reports that AT&T Inc. is in talks of settling the lawsuit that is almost a year old. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has proposed a settlement and both sides are set to meet for a mediation session on August 10 with further proceedings on September 6.

Texas employment lawyers have named Harris County in a lawsuit that focuses on the county sheriff's office, where one employee claims that he was fired for simply being a whistleblower.

ABC News reports that the former IT director of the sheriff's office Wilfrido Willie Mata contacted the FBI when an outsider hacked into the county's computer system, even though he was asked to "look the other way" and not tell the county of the hacking. He later disclosed his cooperation with the FBI to the sheriff's office.