Here we go again, another one:
AirTran not exactly a newbie to lawsuits
Posted: May 2, 2007
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Daniel Bice[/FONT]
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AirTran Airways is soaring in uncharted territory.
That was the original defense put up by the discount carrier when it first discussed five federal lawsuits charging that the airline had permitted widespread sexual and racial discrimination and sexual harassment at its small Milwaukee station. AirTran has come under increased scrutiny of late because it is attempting to buy out
Midwest Airlines here in Milwaukee.
Yes, AirTran acknowledged, ex-employees have gone to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the past to air their gripes about the company. But until now, none of those had landed in federal court.
Let's hear company spokesman
Tad Hutcheson put this in his own words:
"We've averaged fewer than 20 EEO complaints per year since 2000. This is the first (complaint) that has gone to a lawsuit where it's actually going to court since 2000."
So, to reiterate, AirTran doesn't get many of these suits, huh?
"No. This is our first one to go to court. We're breaking new ground here."
Or not.
It didn't take long for readers to start calling and e-mailing to set the record straight.
Actually, as many as a dozen former AirTran employees have sued the company in the past seven years, accusing it of discriminating against them because of their race, disability or national origin. This is not unusual at all, particularly for a company with 8,000 employees.
But one of the racial discrimination suits stands out.
In 2002, a former AirTran supervisor,
Rose Bozeman, filed suit against the carrier based in Orlando, Fla., saying the manager of the Newark, N.J., station canned her because she was Latino.
No, Bozeman didn't win the case. The judge found that she didn't refute AirTran's claim that she was dumped because she failed to deposit $12 in liquor receipts as quickly as required under company policy.
What's interesting, though, is that the manager accused of racial discrimination,
Terese Sellers, is the same person named in several of the Milwaukee suits as ignoring complaints and then retaliating against the employees. Wisconsin's Equal Rights Division found probable cause in the cases of two of the former AirTran workers that the company had discriminated against the women, permitted sexual harassment to occur and retaliated against the two after they raised objections. The three other women filed their cases in federal court before the state issued any preliminary ruling on their allegations.
AirTran has denied the charges.
Sellers did not return calls. She transferred to the Milwaukee office several months after Bozeman filed her EEOC complaint.
Did AirTran officials intentionally forget to mention this case when bragging about their clean record on employee discrimination suits?
Not at all, the airlines' corporate types say.
Hutcheson, the AirTran spokesman, said Wednesday that he simply meant to say that the Milwaukee cases were the first involving sexual harassment to be filed against the company in federal court in recent years.
As for Sellers, he said, she was not transferred to Milwaukee because of the allegations swirling in Newark. Rather, the carrier opened its Milwaukee station in June 2002, and because she had family in the area, Sellers applied for the top post here, Hutcheson said. The move, he said, was a lateral one: "She jumped at the chance."
Lucky us.
For the record, AirTran general counsel
Richard Magurno said the company is not the legal neophyte it was made out to be last week. The image he presents is that of a tough, aggressive litigant.
With the new facts comes a new defense.
Accounting for all cases in which employees claimed they were discriminated against because of their race, sex, national origin, religion or age, Magurno said AirTran has been sued in federal court between eight and 12 times - not the zero figure from last week - since 2000, when he came on board. He agreed that there have been no previous sexual harassment lawsuits.
In his time with AirTran, he boasted, the carrier has won all of its employee discrimination suits.
"We've not settled any of them," Magurno said. "Any case that finds its way into court, in our mind, is a case in which we are completely and totally defensible."
And AirTran has no plans to settle or lose the five Milwaukee cases.
"I have every confidence that our (unbeaten) record is not going to change."
Just the kind of tough talk you would have expected in the beginning from an airline attempting a hostile takeover.
Daniel Bice can be contacted by phone at (414) 223-5468 or by e-mail at [email protected].