Less than a month after being awarded $1.5 million from a federal jury for discrimination during a rehiring process, a former employee of the Savannah River Site’s liquid waste contractor is seeking an additional $1 million in compensation.
That amount represents the pay she would have received from the time she was terminated in 2013 until her retirement, as well as money to offset the taxes accrued on the $1.5 million she has already received from Savannah River Remediation (SRR).
In addition to the extra money, Adrienne Saulsberry is asking U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs to require training for SRR managers so they can properly evaluate former employees during the hiring process when positions become available. In her motion for equitable relief on Friday, Saulsberry’s legal team said she wants other former employees who are in good standing to be properly considered for jobs with the contractor.
Saulsberry, an African-American woman who worked at the site for 23 years and was a first-line manager at Savannah River Remediation, filed her motion for equitable relief weeks after a jury on Sept. 30 awarded her $1.475 million. She first filed suit in August 2016 against SRR, a U.S. Department of Energy contractor at the 310-square-mile Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. In the suit, Saulsberry said she was laid off in 2013 for reporting a white co-worker for making racially-insensitive comments.
The contractor said she was part of a DOE-mandated workforce reduction covering nearly 500 employees. Savannah River Remediation also had refuted Saulsberry’s other claim that she was intentionally passed over for rehire as a first-line manager in 2015 in favor of two white workers. But last month, a jury agreed that at least one SRR manager acted with malice or reckless indifference that compromised Saulsberry’s rights.
