As first reported in The Guardian's Ramon Antonio Vargas:
A woman who says she sold nearly $50m in products for Gucci is accusing the fashion label of forcing her to work around the clock while enduring discriminatory comments about her age and mental health before she was fired for formally complaining about her working conditions.
In a pending lawsuit filed in federal court in Chicago, Tracy Cohen contends that her experience during a nearly 18-year career at Gucci is only one of several cases which illustrate a toxic work culture at the renowned luxury brand.
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Cohen’s suit refers to eight cases alleging that Gucci officials, between 2010 and 2022, maintained sweatshop conditions in China, forced pregnant workers to have abortions, ignored sexual harassment claims, and even required women to wear straitjackets on the modelling runway against their will.
“This is a pattern of conduct that they have engaged in for years,” Cohen’s attorney, Tamara Holder, said in an interview. “How they treated Tracy, how they treat women … I believe that Gucci needs to be held accountable for that.”
Neither Gucci nor its corporate owner, Kering, responded to a request for comment on the claims from Cohen and Holder, known in legal and media circles as a former left-leaning commentator on Fox News who won a multimillion dollar sexual assault settlement from the rightwing network.
Cohen’s lawsuit said she joined Gucci’s Chicago store as a sales associate in 2006, when she was 38. She said she earned recognition as the store’s No 1 salesperson by 2018, accounting for about 15% of the location’s monthly sales and outshining about 20 peers.
Gucci responded to Cohen’s success by saddling her with an even higher – and ultimately unrealistic – sales quota, the lawsuit alleged. Cohen said the company promised to reward her with an assistant as well as international travel and attendance to glamorous fashion shows in Milan, Los Angeles and New York.
But in reality, Cohen said her work required to stay on her mobile devices around the clock. She had to work unpaid overtime and avoided taking time off because she felt her job was in constant jeopardy.
Cohen said she repeatedly told her superiors that she was exhausted, anxious and depressed in that climate. In return, she said, they insulted her as “crazy” and old, gave away her promised travel incentives to younger, lower-performing colleagues and hiked up her sales quota.
In September 2022, Cohen said she sought help by emailing Gucci president Marco Bizzarri, but he did not reply. She said that left her feeling as if there was no internal support available, and she filed complaints with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) as well as the Illinois human rights department, alleging discrimination over her age, gender and battles with anxiety and depression.
The lawsuit said Cohen continued performing well – her managers as recently as last summer even told her that her sales had helped them achieve their bonuses, she said. But she said she signed her professional “death warrant” by filing her EEOC and state human rights complaints, which were required to preserve the option of eventually pursuing a lawsuit if necessary.
Cohen said Gucci suspended her for the first time in her career in July. Without elaborating, the lawsuit said her suspension paperwork “listed incidents that allegedly occurred nine months prior”, and the plaintiff alleges that discipline was simply retaliation.
The lawsuit said Cohen served her suspension and soon helped sell $80,000 of customized goods to clients with whom she had a close relationship. Then, in October, the store fired her without severance, citing a pair of episodes in September that the lawsuit did not detail.
The store waited until after Cohen’s dismissal to deliver the $80,000 in customized orders, ensuring the commission went to associates and managers still at the location rather than to her, she said in the lawsuit, first filed in late January but not previously reported on.
Cohen’s lawsuit said she is among the 63% of workers who – according to a study at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst – eventually lost their jobs after complaining to the EEOC about their employers.
She demands damages, contending that her former bosses violated several laws prohibiting discrimination, retaliation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, abusive labor standards and unfair wages.
The lawsuit also argued that Cohen deserved damages because Gucci subjected her to tactics frequently used by labor traffickers, including by duping her with promises that if she just stuck it out a little longer she would eventually receive compensation commensurate with her unpaid sacrifices.
Holder – whose past clients include 50 plaintiffs who settled a sexual harassment lawsuit against the Twin Peaks restaurant chain – said attorneys for Gucci threatened to seek legal sanctions against her if she didn’t remove the trafficking allegations. But Holder said she had no intention of doing that.
“This case,” Holder said, “has international importance for … working women.”
FORT VALLEY, Ga. (WGXA) -- Bus manufacturing company, Blue Bird, headquartered in Fort Valley, is in the spotlight again after two former black female employees have alleged they were fired after they reported sexual harassment and discrimination amongst labor workers within the Blue Bird company. Their attorney said they were discriminated against as well for blowing the horn on the wrongdoings within the workplace.
They're now asking for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate claims of racial and gender discrimination.
Their attorney is Tamara Holder, a nationally recognized women's rights and civil rights attorney.
Blue Bird has received recent media coverage after workers voted for a union after going on strike seeking higher pay, more regular schedules, and better vacation and sick time. Now, the company could have a separate legal battle to navigate.
"They observed pay disparity between black workers and non-black workers," said Holder via a Thursday Zoom call. They observed pregnancy discrimination where the company refused to provide accommodations to at least two pregnant women."
She said they also observed drug testing discrimination; drug tested more often than others.
"When they brought them up, they were ignored."
Not only were they ignored, they were fired. Holder says her clients have claimed it's because they're black.
"How did the idea of race come into this, instead of two women coming together and saying 'hey, we're observing this,' asked Finney.
"Blue Bird ignored them, and therefore retaliated against them and fired them...They believe that they were treated differently than white female workers who were in a similar position of HR," responded Holder.
Georgia is an at-will employment state, meaning an employer can terminate employment without being required to give any justification for the decision. However, Holder says employers cannot discrimintarily fire employees.
"You cannot get away with discrimination by saying, 'Oh, we're an at-will state,' which is a common defense for people who don't understand discrimination and the Sole Rights Act of 1964," said Holder. They don't understand that you still cannot discriminate."
Holder says challenging decisions such as this could take years.
"So what we're (currently) doing is we're trying to find out how the company handled discrimination if there are any other complaints," said Holder. "So, we will be filing more complaints if more people come forward, and we're in the information-gathering stage at this point".
Holder said the EEOC is aware of the claims. As for what is next, Holder said there would be an investigation, after which she and her clients could possibly settle or potentially file a lawsuit in federal court.
Holder said others who believe they have experienced discrimination or sexual harassment may file their own claims if the event(s) occurred within 300 days of the filed claim.
WGXA reached out to Blue Bird for comment but has not received a response at the time this article was published.
Credit: TNS
This story was originally reported by Michael E. Kanell in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on May 18, 2023
Two human resources employees say they were fired for telling managers of bias in hiring, pay and drug testing
Two former Blue Bird employees have filed complaints with a federal agency charging the iconic bus manufacturer with racial discrimination.
The two women, both Black, have asked the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate their charges that they were recruited by the Fort Valley-based company to work in the human resources department, but were fired in recent months after they told their superiors in management of discriminatory practices in hiring, pay and drug testing.
Company officials did not respond to requests for comments this week from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The complaints add another chapter to the stories of trouble at Blue Bird, the largest employer in Peach County. On May 11, wage workers voted for representation by the United Steel Workers. Supporters of the drive complained about pay and the treatment of workers.
Three days after the vote, Chief Executive Matthew Stevenson abruptly departed — “for personal reasons,” the company said — and was replaced by his predecessor. Three days after that, Stevenson was named president and chief executive of Kentucky-based Holley Inc., which designs, makes and sells a range of high-performance products for cars and trucks.
The unfolding events come as the bus maker is poised to ride a wave of potentially lucrative work as a beneficiary of funding from recently passed federal legislation aimed at fueling the electric vehicle industry.
Those measures included more than $10 billion for clean public transit and school buses nationally, much of it targeted to replacing existing school buses with zero-emission and low-emission models. Also, Georgia schools have been awarded $50.8 million to buy buses, while communities in the state are receiving $31 million to purchase transit buses, according to a release from the White House.
The women alleging discrimination were not wage workers and were not among the workers eligible to vote on unionization, so their firing had no direct relation to the union drive, said Tamara Holder, the attorney representing both. “But I think these complaints are parallel. I think there is a problem with the climate there.”
The AJC agreed not to use the names of the women filing complaints at this point because of their fear that they would be punished in their next job search. Complaints filed with the EEOC are not public, according to a spokeswoman for the agency. However, when the agency believes a complaint has merit and takes the matter to court, that action would be public, she said.
EEOC investigations can last months or years. After an investigation, the EEOC can sue on behalf of the women in federal court. As part of their complaint, the women have asked to be paid damages for the alleged harm suffered, but have specified no amount, according to Holder.
Black employees are the vast majority of the front-line, lesser-paid jobs at Blue Bird — 1,176 of the 1,463 wage workers, said attorney Holder, citing a count last fall by the company itself. Of the 227 salaried employees, 41 were Black.
The senior of the two women said that while problems at the company involved racist and misogynist behavior, the issues were even broader than that. She said she had been hired last June after a career of more than two decades in the field.
She had been lured away to head Blue Bird’s human resources, she said, from a company where she had been a vice president. “I was the only female African American at that level.”
From the start, things seemed wrong, she said.
Most executives worked from corporate offices in Macon, but she was placed in what she said was a rat-infested office at the Fort Valley manufacturing facility. “Then I had to purchase my own office supplies, my own printer, my own mouse and mouse pad.”
She was fired in October.
In her filing with the EEOC, she said she was fired for complaining about a workplace “rife with discrimination,” but also with health and other violations.
“They were not respectful of workers,” she told the AJC.
Among the allegations:
— Rules for drug testing were stricter for the wage workers, most of them Black, than for the salaried employees, most of them white,
— Women on the cleaning crew were routinely victims of sexual harassment by men who walked into bathrooms where they were cleaning and made lewd comments, unzipped their pants and urinated in their presence.
— Pay for new white workers was routinely set higher than for Black workers in similar positions.
— The company resisted efforts to provide accommodations — like chairs — for women workers in a late stage of pregnancy.
“It’s not okay what they have been doing,” said the less senior of the women, who said she was recruited from a job on the West Coast last summer to work in human resources at Blue Bird.
Gucci Accused of Age & Gender Discrimination, Retaliation
Top-Ranked employee has sold over $40 Million for the luxury brand
The Law Firm of Tamara N Holder, LLC, has filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, on behalf of a 18-year veteran female employee, accusing Gucci of discriminating against her based on her age and disability. She also accuses the company of retaliating against her when she complained.
The woman, who is represented by attorney Tamara Holder, alleges in her filing:
We have filed two discrimination complaints with the EEOC against Allied Universal on behalf of two female security guards who allege that - on separate occasions and different locations - the company discriminated against them based on their gender and retaliated against them when they complained. Additionally, their EEOC charges name SEIU, the guards' union, alleging that when they complained to the union about discrimination and retaliation, their complaints were ignored. Both complaints were filed with the Chicago EEOC District office.
If you have information about how Allied treats women in the workplace, please contact The Law Firm of Tamara N. Holder, LLC: 312-440-9000.
This week, The Law Firm of Tamara N. Holder, LLC filed an EEOC charge on behalf of our client, against Look Sharp, a Bowling Green dry cleaning company, for discrimination after the company's owner, Trae Hill, terminated a new mother from employment because the job was “not the healthiest environment for someone still nursing a baby.”
Yet, Look Sharp publicly claims to be “the greener dry cleaner” and that its form of cleaning clothing is “safe, effective and smart."
Mr. Hill terminated the young mother from employment via text, telling her:
"I really appreciate your enthusiasm in wanting to be a part of our team. However, I don’t feel that our environment is the best thing for you, especially only 8 weeks after becoming a new mom and still providing milk to your new baby. As you know, the position requires you to be around a lot of chemicals and breathing them on a consistent basis would not be the healthiest environment for someone still nursing a baby. So I’m sorry, but I have to let today be your last day with us. I have no doubt there are more suitable jobs for you out there."
When the young mother objected to her firing, Mr. Hill said, “My only concern was the sincere safety of Ms. Miranda’s weeks-old baby, whom she was still nursing at the time. It’s alarming to consider even the possibility of a potential impact and possible long-term effects on a newborn.”
We believe our client was illegally fired, in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as Amended, and Kentucky Civil Rights Act, and look forward to an investigation by the EEOC and Kentucky Commission on Human Rights.
Text from Trae Hill, Look Sharp Dry Cleaners, Bowling Green
