Snohomish County has settled two unrelated discrimination lawsuits involving its Public Works Department.
http://liarcatchers.com/employee_investigations.html
The same cases earlier had been the subject of lengthy internal investigations, which found no wrongdoing by top managers.
On Dec. 22, county attorneys agreed to pay a roads employee $100,000 to settle her claims of racial and gender discrimination. The deal allows her to continue working for the county. The county also agreed to provide staff training for some of the workplace issues the suit raised.
A confidentiality clause bars the employee or her attorney from discussing terms of the settlement.
In September, county attorneys signed off on a separate $20,000 settlement with an employee in public works’ Transportation and Environmental Services Division. That agreement has the employee working from home temporarily and resigning in March.
The employees worked in separate divisions of Public Works, which employs more than 600 people and is the largest part of county government after law enforcement.
Both employees are African-American and their cases, in part, involved allegations of unfair treatment because of their race. At the same time, both employees had been the subject of complaints by other co-workers about their behavior on the job.
The larger settlement went to Colleen Moore. She had filed a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in October 2009. The following year, she filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court that recounted racist jokes and sexist comments that a roads crew supervisor allegedly made on the job. That case was later moved to Federal District Court.
The plaintiff in the smaller settlement was Anthony Stigall, who filed his suit in King County Superior Court in November 2010. The suit included the claim that a supervisor gave him instructions not to look at three white women in the office and that he was restricted from parts of the office because other staff considered him intimidating and harassing.
The combined dollar amount to settle the cases is less than what the county spent on earlier internal investigations that sought to untangle the same issues.
In 2010, the County Council approved paying the MFR Law Group of Mill Creek up to $115,000 for an investigation of mutual allegations between Stigall and his co-workers. The law firm’s report, nine months in the making, found insufficient evidence to support Stigall’s discrimination claims or evidence that managers retaliated against him. It also failed to substantiate coworkers’ allegations about Stigall.
The same year, the County Council authorized nearly $29,000 for private investigator Daphne Schneider of Seattle to probe Moore’s claims as well as complaints from co-workers about her. A seven-month investigation found a tense workplace that divided employees into opposing camps. She stopped short of placing blame on either side.
