Pennsylvania Manufacturing Plant Battles Gender Discrimination Suit
The EEOC alleges Schott Glass, an optical glass manufacturing plant, manipulated assignment rules to prevent women from doing “men’s work” prior to a round of layoffs, according to Scranton, Pennsylvania’s Times Tribune.
The suit claims operations with molten glass, “hot-end jobs,” were mostly performed by men at the plant, while jobs relating to inspection and packaging, “cold-end jobs,” were regularly performed by women prior to fall 2004. The suit claims cold-end workers ranked lower than hot-end workers. It also claims male employees were given undeserved credit for being able to perform cold-end duties, which they had never performed and some male applicants with no experience in hot-end or cold-end functions were rewarded with melting line operator jobs over female applicants, according to the Times Tribune.
The suit claims only two of the 25 women ranked by
the company were given jobs after training male melting
line operators on cold-end jobs and one was laid off, the
Times Tribune said.
Wendell Young IV, president of United Food and Commercial
Workers Union, told the newspaper that the union fought
with the manufacturing company for months to limit layoffs
and ensure the company followed the collective bargaining
agreement.
“This was something that was extensively examined at the
time,” Young told the Times Tribune. “In this case, we
firmly believe the layoffs were done in accordance with
seniority and experience,” he said in dispute of the EEOC’s
allegations while adding that gender was not an issue. “Our
main concern was that we followed the labor contract.”