Fred Meyer Stores, Inc. is a northwest supermarket institution, a rags-to-riches monument. Namesake Frederick G. Meyer (originally Frederick Grubmeyer) began in Portland, Oregon in 1908, “selling coffee from a horse-drawn cart to workers at farms and lumber camps.” https://www.fredmeyer.com/i/community/history. The chain’s watchword for a century-plus has been Customer service (with a capital “C”), a safe, convenient and now gargantuan one-stop shopping experience emulated by Target and others.

Challenging the “safe” aspect, the federal U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has filed suit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, charging management allowed a male employee at its Richland, Washington store “to sexually harass multiple female employees over a period of years despite repeated complaints about his unlawful behavior.”

The government alleges that employee “repeatedly subjected his female coworkers to sexual harassment, including wolf-whistling, leering, and degrading sexual comments about their bodies and appearance, as well as groping one female co-worker in the workplace. He also followed female employees around the store and into the company’s parking lot after their shifts, and attempted to follow one female employee with his car as she left the company’s parking lot.”

The suit claims that while company management eventually issued warnings to the worker, he continued to harass his female coworkers for years, until finally terminated in 2021.

Citing Title VII’s zero tolerance standard, the EEOC’s press release reminds that “[t]he law makes clear that every worker has a right to a workplace free from sexual harassment.  For that reason, once an employee makes a complaint of sexual harassment, employers are required to take prompt, appropriate, and effective measures to make the harassment stop.”

Take Aways:

Regular education of company management on the scope of anti-harassment laws and their responsibility to protect employees from over-the-line behavior is a given. Zero-tolerance policies and effective address of any reported violation should be prime  priorities for  any business, whether employing one or thousands.

For further information, please contact Tim Bowles, Cindy Bamforth or Helena Kobrin

See also:

• Defining “No,” Mandatory Sexual Harassment Prevention Training (June 7, 2024)
• 72 Million Reasons Not to Mess With Women – Employer Agrees to End Widespread Sex Discrimination (February 16, 2024)
• Take Heed: Responding to Harassment and Discrimination Complaints Correctly (July 28, 2023)
• Tracking Down Discrimination: EEOC 2020 Report: Retaliation, Disability Claims Predominate  (April 16, 2021)

Tim Bowles
July 19, 2024