By James Barron
May 13, 2006
New York City has settled a lawsuit that the federal government filed in 2001, accusing the Giuliani administration of failing to safeguard women in workfare jobs against sexual and racial harassment by supervisors.
Under a consent decree approved yesterday by Judge Richard C. Casey in Federal District Court in Manhattan, the city promised to send an anti-discrimination notice to employees at agencies that employ workfare workers. The consent decree also said that the city had agreed to pay three women a total of $168,000.
The lawsuit accused the city of subjecting the women, who were in a program that provides welfare recipients training and jobs, to a hostile work environment. The lawsuit said that one supervisor had directed one of the women to pull down her pants in an office in which he had lowered the lights. Another supervisor, the lawsuit said, told a black workfare participant to disregard racist caricatures and a noose inside a building she was assigned to paint.
The Justice Department said when it went to court in 2001 that efforts to negotiate a settlement had failed.
The Giuliani administration had maintained that welfare recipients in the city's workfare program were not employees and were not covered by laws prohibiting sexual discrimination or sexual harassment at work.
Judge Casey dismissed the lawsuit in March 2002, but in February 2004, a federal appeals court overturned his decision and sent the case back to him after concluding that the three women were employees and were covered by federal civil rights laws.
Marilyn Richter, a lawyer for the city, said that after the appeals court ruling, "it seemed prudent — and in the best interests of all parties — to avoid prolonged litigation and resolve the lawsuit."
The consent decree noted that the city had denied the workers' allegations and did not admit wrongdoing. But the city agreed, under the consent decree, to circulate the notice saying that workfare workers cannot be discriminated against.
The city also promised to post the same information on a city Web site and in a city publication describing fair-employment policies.
The largest share of the settlement, $110,000, went to Tammy Auer, who was assigned to the Sanitation Department on Staten Island. The lawsuit alleged that on several occasions, she endured improper touching and inappropriate, suggestive comments by her supervisor.
The lawsuit said that she had complained to the Sanitation Department's borough commissioner, but that the city took no action. A call to her lawyer, Timothy J. Casey, was not returned yesterday.
The third worker, Theresa Caldwell-Benjamin, a welfare recipient working for the Parks Department, will receive $18,000. The lawsuit said she found racist caricatures and a noose hanging in a window in a building where she was working as a painter on Staten Island. The lawsuit said that her supervisor's reaction was that Parks Department employees "didn't mean anything by it."