After complaint filed Postmaster gets temporary assignment as USPS District Manager of Operations
CARTHAGE — A federal court jury has awarded a U.S. Postal Service employee about $125,000 in back pay after finding that her full-time position was eliminated because of complaints that she was being discriminated against for being a woman.
Roberta K. Faul had sued the service in U.S. District Court in October 2006, claiming that men working in the Carthage post office were given preferential treatment over women and that her full-time position was eliminated when she filed complaints about the disparate treatment.
After a five-day trial last week in Binghamton, an eight-person jury deliberated for two hours before deciding that the elimination of Ms. Faul’s full-time job was retaliation for the complaints. In addition to more than 61/2 years of back pay, plus interest, the jury awarded her $25,000 in compensatory damages for the emotional stress brought about by losing her full-time position as window clerk.
The Postal Service also must reinstate her to her original position or pay her the equivalent of what she would be making as a full-time employee. Since March 2004, she has been working in what the service refers to as “part-time flexible capacity.”
“The Postal Service just has to do a better job overseeing their supervisors, and they really have to instill in their supervisors an ability to be fair and equitable to their employees, and quit riding them like they’re jockeys,” said Ms. Faul’s attorney, Marc E. Weinstein, Philadelphia, Pa.
Ms. Faul, who has worked for the Postal Service since 1986, filed a federal Equal Employment Opportunity complaint in 2002 alleging that women in the Carthage post office were treated less favorably than men.
After the complaint was filed, it was claimed that Postmaster Jeffrey A. Sands, who later became postmaster in Watertown and was named in March as the service’s manager of operations for the northern tier of the Albany District, offered to have Ms. Faul transferred to a supervisory position in another post office, but she declined.
full story: Watertown Daily News