Franchise settles bartender sex-bias suit
The Arkansas company that owns and operates 16 Buffalo Wild Wings restaurants in Arkansas and Oklahoma has agreed to pay $30,000 and train management employees about sex discrimination to resolve a lawsuit accusing it of failing to hire men as bartenders because of their sex, according to a consent decree filed Tuesday.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the company on Sept. 28, 2017, three years after David Golden, an experienced bartender who responded to an advertisement on Craigslist, was turned away from an open position at the Little Rock location by a manager who told him the restaurant wanted to hire a woman instead.
The lawsuit alleged that between Feb. 2, 2014, and April 2015, the company “failed to hire at least nine other male applicants who applied for bar-tending positions at its Arkansas and Oklahoma locations.”
A trial was scheduled Feb. 19 before U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson in Little Rock.
The decree, signed by attorneys for the company and the federal agency but not yet signed by Wilson, doesn’t constitute an admission by R Wings R Wild, doing business as Buffalo Wild Wings, to any of the allegations, but was agreed upon to avoid the additional expense and other burdens of continued litigation, it says.
According to the decree, the company is enjoined from failing to hire men for bartender positions because of their sex and from retaliating against any employee for complaining about sex discrimination. Within 10 days, the company must post a notice in a conspicuous place at both its Little Rock location and its Del City, Okla., location stating that it is committed to complying with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The notice is to remain in place for 18 months, during which time the company has agreed to conduct two mandatory training sessions for management employees at the local and regional levels for both locations. Each session is to be preceded by an announcement from the company’s chief operating officer or another high-level executive that the company prohibits sex discrimination in hiring and of any kind in the workplace.
The decree specifies that the company will hire a qualified consultant with specialized knowledge of Title VII sex discrimination and retaliation to conduct the two-hour sessions, and the company will maintain proof of attendance for each person trained. The company also must submit three reports to the commission at regular intervals verifying the training sessions and including the names of all bartender applicants at each of the two locations as well as the names and hire dates of any men who are hired or promoted into bartender positions.
The company has agreed to pay $30,000 to three claimants within 45 days, but the court filing doesn’t include the names of the claimants or where they live.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleged in the suit that Golden tried to get hired as a bartender at the restaurant at 14800 Cantrell Road on July 22, 2014, but a manager told him the company “wanted to hire a female bartender because there was already a male bartender at this location.” The suit said the manager also told Golden that it was the company’s policy “to have only one male bartender at a time at its locations.”