Dive Brief:
- R Wings R Wild, LLC, doing business as Buffalo Wild Wings, has agreed to pay $30,000 to settle sex discrimination charges made by three men who said they weren't hired because they are male.
- The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) had sued the Little Rock, Arkansas, business in 2017, alleging that it refused to hire a qualified male applicant for a bartender position, telling him that it was looking to hire a female. The agency said the restaurant refused to hire other male applicants for bartender positions.
- In addition to the monetary payout, the company also will conduct sex discrimination training for its management employees in its Little Rock, Arkansas, and Del City, Oklahoma, locations.
Dive Insight:
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects individuals from employment discrimination based on sex, including sexual harassment. And while women filethe bulk of EEOC sex discrimination complaints, The Washington Post has reported that men account for nearly 1 in 5 complaints of workplace sexual harassment.
"It is just as illegal to deny a male employment because of his sex as it is a female. Employers must realize that no person, male or female, can be denied employment based on sex, except in the rare instances when gender is a bona fide occupational qualification," said Katharine Kores, district director of the EEOC's Memphis District Office, in a 2017 press release announcing the lawsuit.
Compliance training is important for all managers, including those responsible for hiring. Managers and supervisors are responsible for a large number of discrimination and retaliation claims, experts continue to tell stakeholders.
Some employers are going beyond compliance training and working to address biases, too. Research suggests that unconscious bias training can be successful; when employees accept that everyone has biases, they can be more willing to examine their own.
