🚀 go-pugleaf

Marjorie Valbrun, Wall Street Journal, 4/15/03
www.wsj.com

When the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced a $1.11 million 
settlement against Stockton Steel of California last month, it was one of 
the largest ever for workplace discrimination against Muslims. In the case, 
four Pakistani machine operators who said they were routinely given the 
worst jobs, ridiculed during their daily prayers and called "camel jockey" 
and "raghead," shared in the settlement award.

Stockton, a unit of Herrick Corp. of Pleasanton, Calif., denied the charges 
but said it settled them to avoid costly litigation.

The settlement "was a welcome surprise that energized people in the Arab 
and Muslim community," says Hodan Hassan, a spokeswoman for the Council on 
American-Islamic Relations. "It gave people the sense that it was possible 
to have a company pay a penalty for discriminating."

While the case against Stockton was filed months before Sept. 11, 2001, 
other cases have been directly linked to backlash from the terrorist 
attacks. Last fall, the agency reached a $35,000 settlement with a North 
Carolina medical clinic that ordered a nurse not to wear her religious head 
scarf just days after the attacks. The 40-year-old nurse had worked at the 
clinic for three years and was a new convert to Islam. She said she was let 
go after a patient and doctor reacted negatively to her scarf and she 
refused to stop wearing it as supervisors requested. She is now a nurse in 
Raleigh, N.C.

EEOC Commissioner Paul Steven Miller says that such cases help sensitize 
employers to the issues "and the business community that we work with is 
interested in doing the right thing and avoiding litigation."