Steel fabrication company settles EEOC racial harassment

A Phoenix-based steel fabrication company will pay $500,000 to settle a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit that charged it subjected Black and Latino workers to race and national origin harassment and retaliation, the agency said Wednesday.

The company, Schuff Steel Co., said in a statement that its investigation into the matter found no evidence to support the EEOC’s charges.

The EEOC’s lawsuit said Schuff violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by harassing Black and Latino workers at its Eloy, Arizona, plant and retaliating against them when they complained.

The EEOC said the plant’s manager regularly used racial slurs and epithets against Black and Latino employees, ridiculed Latino employees who did not speak English well and, on several occasions, declared “white power” in front of Black employees.

The EEOC said the manager retaliated against employees who complained about the harassment by firing them or moving them to the night shift.

Under the three-year consent decree settling the lawsuit, in addition to paying the $500,000 to employees, Schuff agreed to retain an outside consultant or legal counsel to review and revise its equal employment opportunity procedures, and to provide antidiscrimination training to its employees, managers and human resources personnel at the Eloy facility and its Phoenix headquarters, among other measures.

The company said in its statement that it “thoroughly investigates any claim of discrimination or retaliation, including the specific claims brought by the former employees that have been asserted by the EEOC.

“Contrary to the EEOC’s allegations of discrimination at its Eloy facility, the company did not find evidence supporting the original complaint, let alone a pattern of discrimination.”

The company said it agreed to settle the lawsuit without admitting any wrongdoing, including any violation of any federal, state or local law, and “is satisfied to put this matter behind it.”