DC Velocity - June 2015

newsworthy

ers, CRST said in the May 21 statement. An additional 68 claims were dismissed, CRST said, because Judge Reade found that the EEOC violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act by failing to investigate individual sexual harassment claims before filing suit against the unit. Judge Reade also cited the agency for failing to suggest a means to resolve the dispute before commencing legal action, a process known as “conciliation.” (Judge Reade, who found that the EEOC had not established a pattern or practice as mandated under the law, also hit the EEOC with a $4.6 million sanction.) The one remaining claim was settled out of court for $50,000, well below the company’s projected litigation costs, CRST said. The company added it was prepared to take the agency to court over that claim if necessary.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently overturned the fine but upheld the lower court’s dismissal of the EEOC’s claims. The appellate court affirmed Judge Reade’s ruling that the agency did not meet its burden of investigating the individual claims before suing CRST Expedited.

Joshua Friedman, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the current suit, said in a phone interview that Judge Reade ruled only on the facts before her in the earlier case. Friedman added that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month in a nontransportation case that the EEOC is only required to engage in a bare minimum of conciliation, thus invalidating that component of Judge Reade’s decision. The pending case in California could incorporate evidence generated during the prior dispute, Friedman said. He said the EEOC is not a party to the current proceeding.

David Rusch, CRST International’s president and CEO, said in a phone interview last month that he had repeatedly asked the EEOC for guidance on how the company’s practices could be improved. The requests fell on deaf ears, he said. CRST finally concluded that the EEOC’s main objective was to force the company into a $50 million settlement. CRST spent $15 million in legal fees fighting the agency, according to Rusch. “They thought we would buckle under, but we weren’t about to be dragged through the gutter,” he said.

Rusch said Judge Reade examined the unit’s anti-harassment policy during CRST’s dispute with the EEOC and found its program to be effective in dealing with grievances brought to its attention.

Friedman argued that although a policy may be valid as
a written document, it might have no legal effect when it is
implemented. Noting that Sellars alleged that incidents of
sexual assault at the unit are so pervasive that women driv-
ers carry knives and Tasers to protect themselves, a jury that
believes such a statement “could not conclude that CRST
has a valid anti-harassment policy,” he said. Rusch said he
was unaware of any allegations of drivers carrying weapons
in a truck, and that doing so violates corporate policy.

BREEDING GROUND

The allegations fuel the perception held by many that the long-haul trucking business is a breeding ground for potentially aberrant behavior. Team drivers are typically on the road three weeks out of a month. They spend half of each working day next to each other in a confined space, they sleep either in the cab or in the same motel, and they are not supervised.

Rusch said he is concerned about the potential consequences of pairing male and female drivers in a cramped cab for weeks at a time. “Personally, I would not have a female driver with a male driver,” he said. “I would not want my 29-year-old daughter with a 62-year-old man that she does not know.” Rusch said, however, that federal law forbids his firm from denying a women’s request to be paired with a male co-driver.

Charles W. Clowdis Jr., managing director, transportation, at IHS Economics, a research and consulting firm, said that in 1999, the American Trucking Associations (ATA) asked him to assemble a team of midlevel trucking executives to conduct a two-year survey into driver-retention trends. Drivers were asked, among other things, why they stayed with a carrier, why they left, and about the nature of their work history, Clowdis said. In a late May interview, Clowdis said his team, made up of veteran male truckers, was “shocked and alarmed” at the time by the pervasive nature of sexual harassment of female drivers.

“We learned that most [incidents] go unreported and
many attempted assaults were fended off by the female
drivers,” he said. “Unfortunately, most reporting assaults
or attempts to their dispatchers received little support or
guidance.”
A female driver’s biggest fear, Clowdis said, was being
accosted when walking to or from her rig. There were few
incidents of assaults or attempted assaults by
go figure …

330

The number of inspectors employed by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to oversee about 530,000 registered truck drivers in the U.S. FMCSA says its Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program allows it to focus enforcement efforts on about 8,000 high-risk carriers responsible for about 90 percent of all reportable accidents involving a truck.