Thread: Boynton nursery settles with feds in worker bias case

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/busines...21nursery.html

Boynton nursery settles with feds in worker bias case
By Jeff Ostrowski

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Thursday, December 21, 2006

UPDATED: 6:19 p.m. December 21, 2006

A Boynton Beach nursery must pay $150,000 to settle charges that it fired five Haitian workers and replaced them with Hispanics.

The company, Dias Landscapes Corp., was sued in federal court earlier this year by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for firing longtime employees based on their race and nationality.

The settlement, announced Thursday by the EEOC, pays $50,000 each to Auguste Jean-Hilaire, 49, and Odolphe Raymond, 60, and $40,000 to Charles Moises, 51. Two other workers get $5,000 each.

Two of the employees had worked for Dias for more than a decade, said EEOC attorney Lauren Dreilinger. At one point, a supervisor took the Haitians' work gloves and gave them to Hispanic workers, leaving the Haitians to work bare-handed, she said.

"What happened to them was very wrong," Dreilinger said.

But Dias Landscapes' attorney Michael McAuliffe painted a different picture. He said Dias owner Stephen Dias settled the suit as a "business decision" to avoid expensive litigation, not because he discriminated against Haitian workers.

"There was a sale of one of the nursery properties, and as a result of that sale, some of these folks were let go," McAuliffe said. "It's not as clear as saying there was a wholesale termination of Haitian workers because they were Haitian." Still, McAuliffe acknowledged that Dias Landscapes' human resources policies hadn't kept pace as the company grew to 60 employees.

Under the terms of the settlement, approved last week by U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks, Dias must adopt an anti-discrimination policy, train employees about discrimination and post a notice that it has settled the suit. All training and notices must be translated into Creole and Spanish.

"This is a company that grew but never grew up," Dreilinger said.

No mention in the article if they are illegal aliens or not. I don't know why it is so hard for the American Media to state this one little piece of info.