Postal worker
alleges he was fired
due to HIVOfficials retaliated and discriminated
against him, a lawsuit claims
A 13-year employee with the U.S. Postal Service alleges he was fired in January because he disclosed to his supervisors that he is HIV-positive.
Matthew Walker, 43, who worked out of the Makiki station for the last nine years as a distribution window clerk, filed suit in U.S. District Court yesterday against Postmaster General John Potter claiming that he was unlawfully retaliated and discriminated against by postal officials.
Walker's firing occurred just days after his doctors submitted verification that he was HIV-positive to support his request for reasonable accommodations to enable him to better perform his job, the suit alleges.
"Mr. Walker's physicians believe that simple, minor accommodation would easily address issues of his job performance," his attorney, Clayton Ikei, said. "The Postal Service refused to even consider such an accommodation. Instead, it discriminated against him by disciplining and dismissing him, treatment different than what was accorded to other employees facing similar issues."
Walker also alleges his firing was in retaliation for an August 2001 complaint he filed alleging that a non-Caucasian female supervisor was giving preferential treatment to non-Caucasian female co-workers. That complaint was settled in September 2001 after voluntary mediation.
Walker was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1996 and continues to be treated by several health care providers.
Ikei said the Postal Service refused to recognize that an HIV-positive condition is a disability under the law, based on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
Walker was notified in December of his termination for "failure to meet performance expectations" after he left unsold stamps in an unlocked drawer behind a service counter for a second time last year, a violation of accounting procedures. Other clerks have failed to secure their cash and stamp drawers but have not been disciplined, the suit contends.
Walker responded to the notice by acknowledging the latest incident and cited his medical conditions, including pain to his ankle from standing at the counter for eight hours, and he asked for reasonable accommodations. (Metal pins were inserted into his ankle after it was shattered in a car accident in his teens.)
He is the first Postal Service employee in Hawaii in recent years to have been disciplined for violating U.S. Postal Service accounting procedures, the suit says.
According to the suit, postal officials also considered his job performance record in recommending his termination, including a seven-day suspension for misusing private information obtained on the job to contact a female customer in January 2002.
Walker had met a female customer who was mailing an envelope addressed to the same doctor he was seeing for his HIV condition. Believing the customer also was being treated for HIV, he wrote a letter to her in support of her condition. The customer complained.
Walker is asking that he be returned to his former position and is seeking damages, including $300,000 in compensation.
Mark Dixon, spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service in Hawaii, said the policy is not to comment on personnel-related matters involving former or current employees, particularly since the matter is now in the courts.