Filing a complaint in-house and/or with the EEOC (employees, job, company)

[CharacterOverTime]

A lot of information but I will try to make the post as short as possible. This situation isn't about me but of my sisters.

My sister has been working in manufacturing for quite some time now; she loves what she does because it helps out with people with health issues. Due to an accident a while back ago; she suffers with peripheral neuropathy in one of her hands. This causes her a wide range of problems but is quite invisible to people who don't understand it.

As you might know already working in manufacturing is a repetitive job. My sister working in a department where there is 6 steps to complete a product. She works along with 4 other colleagues who are quite older than her. Some of the steps are more physical demanding than others steps. I would also like to point out she is a minority in this company.

All of the workers have the same job description and job title and are required to perform all the steps. Shortly after working there (under a year I would say) she was place to mainly do one step. This was the most physically demanding step. She is trained at all the steps and can do everything. While she continuously does this the other workers are taking turns doing the other steps.

After a while as you can imagine this starts to greatly affect her P.N in her hand. She ask her immediate manager and supervisor if she can take turns doing different steps like her other colleagues. She is eventually ignored and nothing is done.

She decided to read the company's handbook about asking for accommodating. She did and it read:When asking for accommodation it's at the discretion of the human resources and/or Manager to request medical documentation regarding any limitations . This discussion can happen with the manager and any personnel from the department of human resources. The request will be evaluated as well as determine if it poses any undue hardship.

A month or so later; she decides to speak with the manager for human resources in that particular facility. She told her that she can perform all of her job duties but she can't sit for 9 hours a day doing the most physically demanded step because it affects her condition.

The manager of the HR dept. immediately offered taking turns at every steps. My sister agreed to the suggested accommodation posed by HR manager and she went back to work. She assumed that this information would have been pass along to her supervisor and/or manager and she would be taking turns doing the steps like the other employees.

After a few months she realized she was being ignored and nothing will be done. She decides to just wait as she can't do anything else. She followed the proper procedures as stated in the handbook. She wasn't accommodate until almost the end of the year (which is almost 8-9 months after the discussion with HR).

After a while someone above(the leader under the supervisor) my sister told her that she didn't have to do this one job all the time anymore and she can start taking turns/rotating at different steps. My sister assumed HR finally got around to speaking with the right people.

A few months ago the manager decides to do a overhaul of the dept. So everyone is putting ideas out how to make their job better. One of the workers (not my sister) request a time interval change of when they switch steps. For example: they were switching steps every 2 and half hours another worker requested that they would like to switch every hour instead. This was approved immediately and it was put into effect the next day.

My sister was very disgruntled as she had to wait months for something like this and this worker requested it and they approved of it immediately.

There is problems again starting to build up with her and her workers as they expect my sister to do all the physical demanding steps and work very fast because they don't want to do it. My sister feels that she doesn't need to explain her condition to her workers. She decides to speak with her supervisor about it. Come to realize that the supervisor knows nothing about it. My sister start putting this together that HR never said anything to anyone and that she was finally able to rotate because they(management) wanted to get the workers more efficient at the other steps.

It's getting to the point where my sister is continuous under fire and ignored by other. They assume because she is young she should do all the work and probably because she is the minority she is often ignored and disregarded. She is seeing that she is getting back to the point where people are expecting/forcing her to do the physical demanding steps.

I told her to file a complaint with the head of the HR dept as well as to file an EEOC complaint (since she is under the 300 days).

Points:

-She wasn't allowed to rotate between steps even when it was something the company did with the other employees my sister works with.

-She had to do the most physically demanding job and it had the most workload while the other employees didn't have to do it.

-When finally speaking to HR about the request for accommodation; she was offered an accommodation (and she agreed to it) but still wasn't accommodated until 8-9 months later.

-HR didn't even inform my sister's immediate supervisor about her condition.


I believe she is treated like this because she is a minority. I told her to place a complaint in-house and/or the EEOC for discrimination of nationality and possible one for disability discrimination (if her P.N falls under the ADA). At this point, she's already being treated like crap anyway.

She can prove what steps she does and that she wasn't part of the rotation because this company is regulated by the gov't and you have to keep strict documentation who performs what steps and this documentation is kept for 8 years before it can destroyed (in case of a recall).

She also recorded the conversation with the HR manager; so they can't say my sister never requested accommodation for her condition and that she was never suggested an accommodation for her condition by the HR manager because its all recorded.

Has anyone ever dealt with filing a discrimination complaint in-house and/or filing one with the EEOC? Thanks

[joe from dayton]

The manager cannot be held responsible for not allowing an accommodation he did not know anything about.

[Rabrrita]

Sounds like some miscommunication all around. EEOC will not accept this as a disability violation because there does not seem to be any attempt on her part to adjust the grievance. Basically, she needs to go back to HR and make sure the situation is properly reviewed along with an agreement over the reasonable accommodation. EEOC will also have a hard time with this because everyone can simply say "I didn't know" or "I thought" with the kicker being "why didn't she open her mouth and say something? She allowed too much time to past between events that any reasonable person would assume everything was fine because she didn't speak up.