The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed lawsuits against retail giant Wal-Mart and coffee brewer Dunkin’ Donuts for allegedly discriminating against employees with cancer.
A Hodgkins, Ill. Wal-Mart suddenly and “for no reason” stopped providing a chair for an employee with bone cancer to use at her work area in the fitting room and then transferred her to a position as a “greeter,” which was even more difficult due to her restrictions on standing.
Additionally, according to the EEOC, a co-worker harassed the employee, Nancy Stack, calling her “cripple” and “chemo brain” and imitating her limp. The co-worker also hid the chair Stack needed. Stack complained but the store took no action, said the EEOC.
“It’s hard to believe a retailer the size of Wal-Mart could not manage to consistently provide such a simple accommodation as a chair,” said John Hendrickson, the regional attorney for EEOC’s Chicago District Office.
The EEOC said the store had agreed, as the result of pre-suit administrative investigation by the EEOC, to comply with Stack’s requests for a chair in her work area, and reduced work hours, but then revoked both. The store went so far as to tell Stack she had to drag her own chair from another department every day, said the EEOC in the lawsuit filed in US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
“Telling a disabled employee that she needs to drag a chair across the store everyday is no accommodation at all,” Hendrickson continued.
Allegedly, Wal-Mart has a history of this type of discrimination. According to the EEOC, the agency filed a lawsuit a year ago against another location for firing an intellectually disabled employee after revoking his workplace accommodations.
Meanwhile, at the Baltimore-Washington Airport, a Dunkin’ Donuts allegedly fired an employee after asking for an unpaid leave to deal with breast cancer treatments.
According to the EEOC, Joan O’Donnell was a regional manager at the airport Dunkin’ Donuts and emailed the owner to say she was diagnosed with breast cancer and would need four to eight weeks unpaid leave for surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. She was
“Granting an employee unpaid leave for needed medical treatment is not only the compassionate thing to do, it is required by federal law unless the employer can show it would pose an undue hardship,” the Spencer H. Lewis Jr., EEOC Philadelphia District Director.
EEOC filed the lawsuit against OHM Concessions Group, which operates Dunkin’s Donuts stores in the airport, in the US District Court for the District of Maryland after trying to reach a settlement with the company, the agency said.
Chad Hemenway is Managing Editor of Advisen News. He has more than 15 years of journalist experience at a variety of online, daily, and weekly publications. He has covered P&C insurance news since 2007, and he has experience writing about all P&C lines as well as regulation and litigation. Chad won a Jesse H. Neal Award for Best Single Article in 2014 for his coverage of the insurance implications of traumatic brain injuries and Best News Coverage in 2013 for coverage of Superstorm Sandy. Contact Chad at 212.897.4824 or [email protected].
