'Rights' Staffers Claim Bias

'Rights' Staffers Claim Bias


A group of Human Rights Specialists have filed Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charges against their employer alleging that they were discriminated against based on age and disability.

JAMES A. BROWN: 'Put them out to pasture.'

The six Commission on Human Rights employees alleged that they were removed from investigative duties and reassigned to do tasks such as phone-answering and "undefined 'community work''' and that their work was given instead to younger staffers, who were often in their 20s.

No Cause for Reassignment?

James Brown, an attorney for the workers, said that the charging parties had received only positive evaluations from their supervisor and that they were not given cause for their reassignment.

"It is disgraceful how these experienced, highly competent Investigators have been treated," said Mr. Brown, who writes an employment law column for this newspaper. "Even with their superior performance evaluations, each of my clients was put out to pasture in favor of far younger employees without any legitimate business justification."

The six workers are Kevin Atkins, Mark Telzer, Petros Solomon, Alemayehu Ayele, Fritz Sanchez and Alonso Myers. All of them are older than 55 and each has more than a dozen years of service. Mr. Sanchez, 61, has worked at the Commission for 29 years.

The Commission responded that the Human Rights Specialist title includes both investigation and community affairs, and that it needed to address staffing shortages in its Community Relations Bureau, a problem that District Council 37 had complained about publicly.

"The Commission has yet to receive a complaint from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; therefore I cannot comment on its particulars, but I am confident the Commission will prevail since we do not discriminate against our employees for any reason," Commissioner Patricia L. Gatling said in a statement.