The backbreaking work of the construction world isn't for everybody. The hours are long and unpredictable, the clients can be demanding and the physical nature of the job is often dangerous and taxing. Underneath the piles of plywood and stacks of drywall, the construction industry hides a history of employee discrimination, wrongful termination and wage and hour disputes. With tougher nationwide labor laws being currently enforced, however, many construction businesses are under fire. Individual lawsuits have targeted the industry, blowing the whistle on unfair labor practices.

Micheal Robertson of Wisconsin Rapids, Wis., worked as a construction foreman for Miron Construction for two years. Making $33 dollars an hour from 2007-2009, it was a pretty good gig. Miron is a reputable company in Wisconsin that worked on Wisconsin Public Service's power plant in the small town of Weston. But things went sour for Robertson, he claims, when his supervisors asked him to falsify his time sheets. After he denied the request, Robertson says he was fired. He filed a wrongful termination suit earlier this month in Wisconsin Federal Court.

Robertson was called on to perform maintenance on one of the plant's cooling towers that was in dire need of a de-icing after one of the region's typically-brutal winters. Initially, he called in 20 workers for the project, but after more closely inspecting the state of the tower, he determined that fewer men were actually needed to get the job done. In his complaint, Robertson says that his supervisor, Steven Miller, said to go ahead and bill Wisconsin Public Service for labor previously predicted. When Robertson flatly refused, Miller threatened him and told him he could lose his job for not falsifying the time sheets. Miller went ahead and filed the false time sheets himself and Robertson was fired for taking company property home. When Robertson contested this charge, stating his job required him to take some equipment home, Miller told him he was actually being fired for not getting along with co-workers. Robertson struck back and filed a complaint with his labor union.

Robertson's lawsuit against Miron Construction is seeking unspecified punitive damages for wrongful termination.

In the southern Los Angeles community of Lynwood, school board officials are still trying to decide if they should hire Edward Velasquez, the current superintendent in the nearby Montebello Unified School District. Board members recognize Velasquez's experience but many are feeling apprehensive. Even normally complacent high school students have shown up at school board meetings to voice their concerns. Why? Edward Velasquez is currently the target of an explicit lawsuit filed against the Montebello Unified School District in March by former employee Irving Bartikofsky. The suit claims that Bartikofsky was the victim of employment discrimination, sexual battery, retaliation, wrongful termination and hostile work environment. Many folks in Lynwood are unsure if they want to be associated with Velasquez and a lawsuit that has the potential to get really ugly.

According to the lawsuit, working at the Montebello Unified School District as a former administrator in the district's special education department was a nightmare for Irving Bartikofsky. Bartikofsky claims that Velasquez stuck a wet finger in his ear and grabbed his genitals. Reportedly, Velasquez made numerous sexual remarks to Bartikofsky and told him he wanted to kiss him. Bartikofsky formally filed a complaint with the school board who dismissed his allegations and denied him a claim for damages in 2009. To make things worse, the lawsuit alleges that Irving Bartikofsky's job was eliminated after he filed the complaint and was replaced by Velasquez's friend and divorce attorney. Shortly after being fired, Bartikofsky was sent back to working in the classroom. Finally, Bartikofsky's complaint was approved by the Department of Fair Employment and Housing in a letter from June 2009 which stated he had the right to sue the school district. Filed in Los Angeles Superior Court last month, the lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount in damages.

Meanwhile, the members of the Lynwood school board are expected to make a decision on whether or not they will hire Edward Velasquez as Superintendent in the next few days.

Deep River scientist and former Pfizer employee Becky McClain has won her lawsuit against pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer. The jury awarded McClain $1.37 million and unspecified damages to cover the costs of her extensive lawsuit.

McClain has alleged that, while working at Pfizer's Groton Laboratory, she was exposed to a bioengineered virus that has caused her severe health problems, including bouts of temporary paralysis as often as 12 times a month. The virus in question, known as a lentivirus, has been demonstrated to share many characteristics with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

McClain further alleged that Pfizer wrongfully terminated her employment in 2005 when she began to raise questions about lax workplace safety in the laboratory. She claimed that she and a coworker were both made ill from an uncontained gas, which was the result of lax safety protocols and faulty equipment. McClain further stated that her supervisor warned her not to make an issue of the safety conditions, saying it could lead to her firing. McClain claims this was an attempt to violate her protections under whistleblower laws.

Pfizer has denied McClain’s claims and has expressed disappointment in the results of the case. The company claims that the facts do not bear out McClain's allegations. They argue, for example, that she was terminated for failure to show up to work before her whistleblower claims were even filed. They also claim they are very careful about workplace and researcher safety, citing OSHA compliance inspections and other factors. The company is currently considering its options for appeal.

Yet, this case does raise other issues, such as the unfortunate reality that frequently today's laws are designed to address yesterday's problems. Technology continues to develop more quickly than legislation regulating it can be passed. This means that there is a very real chance that modern workplace hazards are technically legal under current regulations while in actuality they are unacceptably dangerous. Whether this is currently the case at Pfizer is unknown, but suits such as McClain's do bring the issues to light so they can be debated and, hopefully, properly addressed.

Melissa Ross has been awarded $205,506 by a federal jury because, she says, she was wrongly fired because she is black. The jury agreed that Melissa Ross of Jackson was fired because of her race. The jury did not find that officials at the school had retaliated against her.

Though she had asked for $500,000, the jury awarded Ross $40,506 for back pay and benefits, and $165,000 for pain and suffering, according to the verdict returned Tuesday. The state plans to appeal state attorney general office’s spokeswoman Jan Schaefer said in an email. Tom Burnham, state superintendent of education, said in a statement that he and the state Board of Education "are disappointed in the outcome and are weighing our options. We will have no further comment at this time." Ross, who now works at Jim Hill High School, and her attorney, Michael Brown, could not be reached for comment.

According to the lawsuit, Ross was hired at the school as a special education teacher for Family Consumer Science. According to the lawsuit, she was not proficient in sign language at the time but was working to improve. In a 2007 complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Ross said she had been hired in August 2006 and was promoted with a raise in February 2007. But in May of 2007, she was given a bad evaluation because she was not proficient in sign language and was told she would be fired that July, according to the complaint. Also in the complaint, Ross pointed out six black teachers were fired effective July 2007. "To my knowledge there was a white male teacher on probation who was not discharged," Ross said.

Concerns about teachers at the school not being proficient enough in sign language bubbled over on Nov. 28, 2006. About 20 high school students and some teachers protested that four of their 26 teachers were not proficient in sign language. That year, then-state Superintendent of Education Hank Bounds told The Clarion-Ledger his staff had been looking into the incident and the situation shouldn't have escalated to the point of a walkout.

He also noted there was a statewide shortage of about 1,700 teachers, and it had been difficult to find teachers who could sign proficiently. That number had doubled by 2008.  

The Ohio Workers' Compensation Council was created nearly three years ago after a massive statewide scandal. The state’s insurance fund for injured workers was drained of a hefty $300 million as a result of being sunk into risky investments like Beanie Babies, collectable rare coins, and other financial gambles. In the wake of this financial disaster, the state of Ohio created the panel to assist lawmakers in policing the insurance fund.

In an ironic and equally scandalous twist, the Ohio Workers' Compensation Council itself is facing embarrassing allegations of religious discrimination, wrongful termination, age discrimination and retaliation.  The whirlwind of lawsuits all center on the council’s director, Virginia McInerney, who allegedly pushed her own religious beliefs on her staff members before firing them. Three female ex-employees allege that McInerney held mandatory prayer sessions, distributed religious literature and CDs to her staff, and subsequently fired them after tensions around the religious subject matter in the office erupted. The former workers state in separate letters that McInerney offered each of them severance agreements that would also release her from any legal claims. All three of the employees refused to sign.

Virginia McInerney has publicly denied the claims while refusing to discuss the nature of the firings in any depth. The three fired women had all been hired within the past year and appear to have been model employees with no previous disciplinary charges having been brought against them. Each of the women claim that McInerney gave them copies of the “God at Work” CD collection and required them to take notes on the religious material and share those notes with other staff members. Furthermore, office employees of different faiths started to feel uncomfortable with the office prayer policy.  Others were asked to do tasks to prevent acts of Satan. The three women are all seeking to change the status of their terminations from firings to a settlements.

We all can spot an Abercrombie and Fitch advertisement from a mile away. The formula is a familiar one: Take stunning male models with rippling abs and meticulously messed hair, place in black-and-white photo that screams sensuality, add an equally stunning female model, stir and enjoy.  Abercrombie and Fitch have been selling jeans and t-shirts on the backs and behinds of gorgeous young things since the late 1980s. Their brand exploded in the 1990s and early 2000s with worldwide store openings, fragrance sales, and the popularity of their highly sought-after catalog.  Yet the massive retailer’s name has become synonymous with something other than sexy ads and overpriced polo shirts: workplace discrimination. In fact, a slew of lawsuits have been filed against A&F.   In one, employees claimed they were relegated to the stockroom because they weren't white, which resulted in a 2004 settlement.  In another, a British employee sued A&F when the company forced her to move from the sales floor to the stockroom because she had a prosthetic arm.

Recently, Muslim college student Hani Khan was fired from Hollister, an A&F sister store geared toward a female surfer clientele, for wearing a headscarf (or hijab as it is known in the Muslim religion).  Human resources allegedly told Khan that she was not being fired for her performance but for specifically violating the company's “look policy,” which states employees are not allowed to wear hats or scarves while working.  Khan explained that her scarf was worn for religious reasons but was simply told again that she had violated company policy.  Even though the nineteen-year-old Khan had been instructed at the time of her hiring that as long as her scarf represented one of the company colors of white, gray or navy, there would be no problem with her wearing one at work, she came under scrutiny when a visiting district manager noticed the scarf and reported her.  Not willing to take such treatment lying down, Khan has given dozens of interviews with global media outlets since her firing last Monday and is currently filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She is currently enrolled in college in the Bay Area and is interested in becoming a lawyer.

If you've been a victim or religious discrimination or wrongful termination, please contact our offices for a free consultation.