PHOENIX — A steel fabrication company based in Phoenix has agreed to pay $500,000 after employees reported being called racial slurs by one of the company's managers.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced Wednesday that a lawsuit brought against Schuff Steel Company has resulted in a three-year consent decree that requires the Valley company to provide anti-discrimination training to its employees and managers.
According to the EEOC lawsuit, the manager of a facility in Eloy allegedly called Black and Latino employees racial epithets, declared "white power" on several occasions, and ridiculed employees who didn't speak English well.
The manager would allegedly retaliate against employees who complained about their conduct by firing them or reassigning them to the night shift, according to the lawsuit.
“No person should ever have to work in such a racist and hostile work environment in order to make a living to support their families. And it is particularly troublesome that this behavior was done by a manager in this case,” attorney Mary Jo O’Neill of the EEOC’s Phoenix District Office said in a statement.
The decree obligates Schuff Steel to pay $500,000 to the aggrieved employees, provide a hotline for employees to report workplace discrimination, and have an outside consultant review the company's policies.
"The Parties stipulate that this Consent Decree is fair, reasonable, and equitable; is not a product of collusion; and does not violate the public interest. The Consent Decree was achieved after arms-length negotiations between the Parties," a court document signed by both parties states.
UP TO SPEED
How big is Maricopa County?
Maricopa County is the United States’ 4th largest county in terms of population with 4,485,414 people, according to the 2020 Census.
The county contains around 63% of Arizona’s population and is 9,224 square miles. That makes the county larger than seven U.S. states (Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, Massachusetts and New Hampshire).
One of the largest park systems in the nation is also located in Maricopa County. The county has an estimated 120,000 acres of open space parks that includes hundreds of miles of trails, nature centers and campgrounds.
The county’s seat is located in Phoenix, which is also the state capital and the census-designated 5th most populous city in the United States.
The county was named after the Maricopa, or Piipaash, Native American Tribe.