DialAmerica Marketing, LLC, a provider of telemarketing and call-center services for third-party clients, will pay $85,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charging race and sex discrimination and retaliation, the federal agency announced.
The EEOC’s lawsuit charged that a DialAmerica manager at its former Middleburg Heights, Ohio location falsely accused a black female employee of using profanity on a customer call and sought to use the accusation to justify firing the employee, while the manager’s real reason was the employee’s race and sex.
The suit alleged the employee later called DialAmerica’s senior vice president of human resources to report discrimination and that DialAmerica retaliated against the employee for her complaint.
Such alleged conduct violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employers from discriminating against workers because of race or sex and also prohibits employers from retaliating against workers because they report or otherwise oppose conduct that they reasonably believe to be employment discrimination. The EEOC filed suit (U.S. EEOC v. DialAmerica Marketing, LLC, Civil Action No. 1:24-cv-01674-SO) in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division.
The parties subsequently agreed to settle the case before trial, and on June 24, the federal court approved the two-year consent decree resolving the litigation. In addition to paying $85,000 to the employee, DialAmerica is specifically prohibited from unlawfully discriminating against workers because of race or sex when making discharge decisions and when applying any call review or auditing or performance evaluation procedures.
DialAmerica must also maintain an employment policy which prohibits race and sex discrimination, as well as retaliation in the workplace, and also requires all employees designated to receive reports of alleged discrimination or harassment to document those reports in writing. In addition to other actions, DialAmerica must also provide mandatory training to human resources employees about investigating and responding to employees’ reports of alleged discrimination or harassment.
Source: EEOC
Topics Ohio
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