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Lawsuit claims widespread discrimination across 1,414 stores run by Akron's Sterling
By By Mark Albright|
St. Petersburg Times|
Published on Saturday, Sep 27, 2008
Filling in again as a Jared Galleria of Jewelry store manager in Brandon, Fla., Dawn Soto- Coons' long-suspected fears were confirmed when she stumbled into a payroll report on an office desk.
''Sure enough, every male except one earned more — $2, $3 and up to $4 an hour more than any of the females,'' said the 13-year jewelry store veteran. ''Even the top female sales associate, who sold more than $1 million of jewelry a year, got $2.50 less an hour than a guy just hired with no jewelry experience.''
Soto-Coons is connected to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday in Buffalo, N.Y., by the U.S. Employment and Equal Opportunity Commission alleging systemic sex discrimination in pay and promotion across 1,414 jewelry stores run by Sterling Inc., based in Akron.
Soto-Coons, 49, had managed one of the parent company's JBRobinson stores in Maryland. But since relocating to Tampa, Fla., with her husband's government job seven years ago, she said she took a $20,000 pay cut.
She said she was then passed over for store manager openings twice, and trained men with no jewelry background for manager jobs she was denied. At the time of her payroll discovery, she said she was pinch-hitting for a male boss who was being trained for a promotion to district manager. She said she did not get the job he vacated, either.
A unit of British-owned Signet Group, the world's largest specialty jeweler, Sterling owns the Jared and Kay Jewelers retailers and employed 20,000 Please see Sterling, D2
Continued from Page D1
women in the period covered by the suit dating to Jan. 1, 2003.
Nineteen named plaintiffs in eight states and hundreds more in statements collected in 20 states claim similar experiences to Soto-Coons'.
Filed in U.S. District Court in Western New York, the civil case seeks unspecified money damages and a court order in which Sterling agrees to make changes and be independently monitored.
The EEOC case grew from what was found in discrimination complaints in Tampa where female workers are in arbitration with Sterling.
''From cases like Tampa, we verified systemic pay and promotion discrimination across the entire company,'' said Margaret Malloy, EEOC senior trial attorney in New York.
Because Sterling gives local managers wide discretion, ''pay and promotion have been excessively subjective,'' the EEOC said.
''It's amazing a company that gets most of its business from women treats female employees like this,'' said Sam Smith, a Tampa lawyer.
Sterling denies discrimination, noting most store managers nationally are women. Sterling said Soto-Coons didn't get promoted because of declining job performance.
''We take the allegations very seriously,'' spokesman David Bouffard said. ''We are confident these charges do not reflect the culture of this company.''
Other Jared workers in Florida, however, say local managers hire and promote friends, who are more often male. They also say the company ignored sexual harassment complaints and tolerated boorish behavior including an alleged sexual assault of a 25-year-old employee by a 40-year-old supervisor at store management conferences staged annually at Walt Disney World.
''It's the good ol' boy network,'' said Judy Reed, 56, who said she stepped down from assistant store manager to a sales job at Jared in Citrus Park, Fla., last year. Reed said she made the decision after being passed over a third time for manager jobs she didn't know were open until they were filled.
''There is no system to inform you of openings, so I never had a chance to interview.''
Sherry Roberson, who worked as a Jared assistant store manager in Illinois and Tampa, said her experience was similar to Soto-Coons'.
''I was assured on my first promotion to assistant store manger that the $35,000 a year they offered me was the company standard,'' she said. ''Then I met a man with no retail experience who got the same job at $37,000.''
Filling in again as a Jared Galleria of Jewelry store manager in Brandon, Fla., Dawn Soto- Coons' long-suspected fears were confirmed when she stumbled into a payroll report on an office desk.
Get the full article here.
Comments
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Posted 03:55 AM, 09/27/2008
I certainly hope that Dawn can win the lawsuit against those pigs! It amazes me how there are men out there that think they are superior over women!
Posted 04:43 AM, 09/27/2008
If the lead plaintiff is in Tampa and the company headquarters is in Akron, why file the suit in the Western District of New York?
Posted 06:35 AM, 09/27/2008
Diane, how do you know the allegations are true? Do you know the circumstances? How do you know this isn't a former employee grinding an axe? Being employed in a corporate setting, I can tell you that there is not much flexibility in what you can pay employees. While it's possible the allegations are true, I'm a little skeptical.
Posted 06:41 AM, 09/27/2008
The days of thinking that men need to make more money than women because they support families are long gone. Half of families are supported by single women. If this is true I hope Sterling is made to pay big bucks for perpetuating this insanely unfair practice.
Akron, OH
Posted 07:14 AM, 09/27/2008
You are skeptical about the veracity of the allegations because they are against your kind: white men. They need to settle out of court and move on.
akron, oh
Posted 11:19 AM, 09/27/2008
Terry - you have been watching the Vagina Monologues a bit too much. Chill out and quit hating men. Not everything they taught you in Women's Studies 101 is true.
akron, oh
Posted 02:49 PM, 09/27/2008
Terry - and you accept the allegations before they are proven because it fits in with what you are told at your Feminism Therapy.
Posted 08:01 PM, 09/27/2008
Jason and tim - After college, I started working in accounting departments (including payroll) at several companies, large and small. I went in believing the days of discrimination are over, all is equal, I had a bachelor's degree, I would be well taken care of, etc. Since then, I've seen so much discrimination that I have been completely disillusioned. It's there, and it's real.
Posted 11:34 AM, 09/28/2008
Must have been one heck of a payroll report she "stumbeled into" on that office desk. Bull dookey. Sterling obviously needs more security for their computer files, and I would bet this woman was spending company time searching for this information. I hope the woman loses not only the lawsuit, but her job as well.
