| September 1st, 2005 |
The EEOC is suing Kaiser for discriminating against a pregnant nurse:
http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2005/08/29/daily33.html?from_rss=1
Having looked into the EEOC option myself, this must be an airtight case. In California, at least, both DFEH (equivalent of Dept. of Labor) and the EEOC are overloaded, and they shrug off many qualified cases just for administrative reasons. They also usually need to have a stack of similar complaints to establish a "pattern" of discrimination.
I found Kaiser's response astounding:
"We were made aware of this lawsuit today. Once we receive the lawsuit, we will review its content thoroughly."
If "the commission filed the suit after the parties failed to reach a settlement", then of course Kaiser was aware of the issues involved! They've already reviewed this case. They obviously just gambled that the plaintiff wouldn't be able to win a lawsuit and probably didn't expect the EEOC to get involved.
Kaiser needs to take a good hard look at the blank ethical check they've given their public relations department. In my case, the front men Matthew Schiffgens and Rick Malaspina, had no problem with just telling outright lies: that Kaiser didn't post the System Diagrams (alluding that I must have), that I worked on the Systems Diagrams "project", that the Systems Diagrams have nothing to do with HealthConnect (Kaiser's EMR), and that the Systems Diagrams couldn't be "Googled". Now here is Kaiser spokesperson Lynn Kenton trying to claim that Kaiser has no idea what this suit is all about, *after* some sort of settlement talks have occured. These Kaiser spokespeople are just the most shameless liars imaginable.
Furthermore, this lawsuit illustrates what I've been trying to say all along about Kaiser HR. Kaiser asserts "seriously providing ongoing training to its physicians and staff". However, the managers at Kaiser can count on HR to cover up whatever they do, so they are completely free to avoid this supposed training. If a manager doesn't like someone or feels that something like a pregnancy might prove to be an inconvenience, all they have to do is make up some legal reason and document it. They know if the victim of the false documentation complains, HR will look after what they believe to be Kaiser's best interest - quashing the legal "threat" and building up more documentation that will make the situation look legal and dragging things out so any evidence that would uphold what really happened will be destroyed.
Just think of how much time and trouble would have been saved by everyone if HR were disposed to solve these problems quickly and fairly on behalf of the people who have been wronged. If the pregnant woman's promotion had been confirmed immediately, with any lost back pay and the appropriate apology, there would be no trouble. I bet anything Kaiser offered her something, but tried to offer her less than what she'd lost just because it's good business to lowball people who usually don't have the resources to follow through on a big lawsuit. Now, thanks to the EEOC, there is a big lawsuit which will ultimately be paid for by Kaiser's members. That will cost more than doing the right thing in the first place - to compensate this woman for exactly what Kaiser had taken away from her.
And this woman will also be owed out-of-pocket expenses and damages, since Kaiser chose to put her through the ordeal of an adversarial process. How long has this poor woman been pursuing this? What have her out-of-pocket expenses already been? In my experience, it takes seven months just to go through Kaiser's phony Dispute Resolution Process. It takes another few months after that just to get a half-hour interview with the EEOC. This woman has probably already been through months of mistreatment as she just struggled to get Kaiser to hear her. If the litigation process continues, Kaiser will try to win it by smearing her all over the press and slipping awful lies into the legal papers in hopes the press will pick them up and that the woman will be upset enough to accept whatever deal Kaiser deigns to offer her. When did "threat to continue to lie" about an opponent become acceptable leverage in litigation? I hope the EEOC will help this poor woman get justice.
Update: If Kaiser does settle with this case, someone should let this woman know that Kaiser has a history of retaliating against people who prevail in employment lawsuits.
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