AT&T suit includes
Hawaii plaintiff

20 workers are claiming
race, sex and age bias

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By David Voreacos
Bloomberg News

TRENTON, N.J. >> AT&T Corp. has been sued by 20 current and former employees, including one in Honolulu, who claim the biggest U.S. long-distance telephone company discriminates against workers based on their age, sex, race and disabilities.

The federal lawsuit by 12 black workers, six white women and two white men says AT&T supervisors -- including an alleged Ku Klux Klan member -- subjected workers to racial slurs, sexual harassment and age bias. AT&T's human resources department failed to investigate each complaint, and workers later were victims of retaliation, the suit alleges.

"They have been subject to retaliatory actions after they have complained to AT&T Human Resources," said the suit, filed in Trenton. "Each plaintiff reports that they have witnessed or been the object of retaliation which has dissuaded not only themselves but all AT&T employees from complaining."

The suit comes at a time of contraction at AT&T, which announced Monday it will slash 3,500 jobs and has said it will write down the value of its Latin American and high-speed Internet ventures, wiping $1.54 billion from fourth-quarter pretax profit. AT&T has 72,000 employees, down from a peak of 166,000 in 2000, before the company spun off or sold its mobile-phone and cable-TV operations.

AT&T will respond to the suit "in due course," said spokeswoman Cindy Neale. "While we don't comment on specific litigation, it is AT&T's policy to fully investigate any allegations made by employees."

Each employee in the bias case complained to AT&T's Equal Employment Office, confusing it with a government agency, the suit said. The workers later filed discrimination charges with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

A man with a bone disorder who uses a wheelchair, Jezebel Tiphareth, alleged that he was fired after complaining about a lack of automatic door openers at an AT&T office in Restaurant Row. Tiphareth, a 43-year-old Honolulu resident, said he used his wheelchair as a battering ram to get through doors. Tiphareth complained about the lack of accessibility, and alleges that his firing -- which occurred shortly after he had a scuffle with another employee -- was part of a pattern of retaliation against him.

Don Courtney, a black man who held assembly line and construction jobs between 1973 and 2001, worked at one point for a white manager in Atlanta, Jerry Newman, the suit said.

"It was general knowledge in the office that Newman was a member of the Ku Klux Klan," the suit said. When Courtney complained about being passed over for promotions, Newman allegedly responded: "I want to put a rope around your neck."

The suit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, as well as an order preventing the company from retaliating against the workers in the lawsuit.