Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) has settled a discrimination lawsuit filed against the contractor by a former employee who alleged she was denied a better job opportunity because she was Hispanic and the person who got the job was white. However, terms of the settlement were not released.
Victoria Brandner sued SRNS, the Savannah River Site’s management and operations contractor, on Oct. 19, 2015, in the Aiken Division of the U.S. District Court for South Carolina.
Brandner was employed at SRNS for 12 years. According to the initial complaint, tensions between Brandner and SRNS started when she, in her opinion, was wrongly terminated due to multiple inappropriate incidents during her tenure as an emergency call technician. For example, in November 2014, Brandner and a co-worker walked into a storage room on site where her co-worker showed her a “penis cake” that he brought to “cheer up (Brandner) while she finalized her divorce,” according to the complaint. On Jan. 5, 2015, Brandner was questioned about the incident by an investigator with the SRS operations center, but maintained that she was innocent.
She was also questioned about a rumor that she watched a sex tape while at work, but told officials she brought a movie called Sex Tape starring Cameron Diaz to work in order to return the movie to Redbox after her shift, the complaint says. Less than two weeks later, Brandner was informed on Jan. 16 that she was being terminated.
All the while, Brandner was vying for an emergency duty officer position within the company. Following her termination, Brandner learned that the job had been given to a “younger, white female with much less experience,” according to the complaint. “The Plaintiff is entitled to an award of actual and compensatory damages as well as punitive damages for the willful and intentional acts of the Defendant through its agents and employees, and for reasonable attorney’s fees and costs of this action,” Brandner’s lawyers wrote.
SRNS denied the majority of the claims made by Brandner. The contractor stated in its response that she was entitled to “no relief whatsoever” and asked that the case be dismissed.
Both parties advised the court on Aug. 30 that the case had been settled. Brander’s lawyer would not provide details on the settlement. SRNS provided a single sentence: “This case was mediated, settled and dismissed, with a mutually agreed-upon settlement.”
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions conducts a host of waste cleanup, defense, nuclear materials, and nuclear nonproliferation operations at the facility. The contractor is a partnership of Fluor, Honeywell, and Stoller Newport News Nuclear.
This was not the first time SRNS had been involved in a discrimination lawsuit. On Aug. 12, 2015, the U.S. Department of Labor ordered the contractor to pay $234,895 to 72 black and female workers. The Labor Department stated that, between 2009 and 2010, SRNS paid 57 female employees less than their male counterparts and 15 African-American employees less than their white counterparts. The contractor was also told to review its personnel policies to resolve allegations of systemic pay discrimination.
SRNS responded that it disagreed with the findings, but that it was “happy to reconfirm our company’s commitment to non-discrimination and equal employment opportunities offered to all of our employees, regardless of their race, gender or membership in any of the other categories protected by law.” The contractor entered into a conciliation agreement with the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) on Aug. 11, 2015 and fully complied with the requirements of the agreement.
One of those requirements included the development of improved compensation practices to ensure women receive fair pay. Other met tasks include development of an internal auditing system that periodically measures the effectiveness of the SRNS affirmative action program, and evaluating other possible gender and race disparities within the organization.
