A former employee of the liquid waste contractor for the U.S. Energy Department’s Savannah River Site has been awarded $240,107 in front pay she would have earned if the company had not unfairly denied her employment after she was initially laid off.
In addition, U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs ruled on Jan. 17 that Savannah River Remediation (SRR) must pay Adrienne Saulsberry $55,118 she had requested in pre-judgment interest – additional dollars that would have accrued on back pay she lost as a result of her termination.
The added money comes after a jury awarded Saulsberry $1.475 million in September in her case against Savannah River Remediation, an AECOM-led company at the Energy Department operation near Aiken, S.C. The seven-figure sum covered $1 million in punitive damages, $55,000 in compensatory damages, and $420,000 in back pay.
Saulsberry, who is African-American, worked at the Savannah River Site for 23 years and was a first-line manager for SRR at the time she was let go in 2013. She sued in August 2016, alleging the contractor wrongfully included her in a DOE-mandated workforce reduction of nearly 500 employees. Saulsberry argued she was terminated for reporting to SRR management a white co-worker who had made racially-insensitive comments.
She also said that, the following year, she was denied reinstatement when she tried to land another job with the contractor. Federal law requires government contractors to give added consideration to rehiring quality employees who have been laid off, but SRR did not even offer Saulsberry an interview.
