Union axed me for being a man By JULIA MARSH
A union secretary says he was fired for being a guy — citing a female supervisor’s poster that declared, “Women on the Rise” as Exhibit A in an unusual gender-discrimination lawsuit.
Staten Island resident Manuel Garcia was hired as an administrative assistant in 2011 by the Office and Professional Employees International Union, which represents 125,000 white-collar workers.
He was promoted to administrative clerk in a Manhattan office, where he was the only man among a staff of 13, he says in court papers.
Garcia, 52, claims he was “subjected to disparate treatment due to his gender (male), such as not being allowed to perform his responsibilities in QuickBooks and if he made a mistake he was not allowed to correct it, unlike the similarly situated female employees.”
“Female employees were allowed to have a lunch at their desk while [Garcia] was not allowed to do so,” he claims in the Manhattan Supreme Court suit.
He was canned in March and replaced by a woman, according to court papers.
He says supervisor Mary Mahoney fostered an “anti-male atmosphere” by displaying the “Women on the Rise” poster in the office.
But the union’s lawyer, Jane Barker, called the allegations “defamatory, false and scurrilous.”
The poster in question “is a take off of a wellknown art print of men on a skyscraper beam,” Barker said. “There’s nothing wrong with having a ‘Women on the Rise’ art print in your office.”
Barker added that Garcia was laid off in a “restructuring of the union, as were others, including women.”
Garcia is suing for unspecified damages, including lost income and “pain and suffering.”