Men carried toolboxes bearing pictures of scantily clad women. Supervisors roamed the floors, checking out what one witness called the “fresh meat,” newly hired, attractive women.
And there were sexually explicit jokes and comments about “lazy” Hispanics.
Attorneys for April Garcia Kaas, who is suing her former bosses at the U.S. Mint in Denver, on Tuesday painted a picture of a dysfunctional group of male managers who preyed on the women who worked for them.
Several women who testified in U.S. District Court in Denver also are involved in a separate, pending class-action suit against the factory.
Rose Rentiera, a 59-year-old laborer at the Mint, told jurors how supervisor Louis “Bud” Woodard would tell offensive, sexually explicit jokes.
One day, she said, he called her and another woman into his office. On the computer screen was an obscene cartoon.
“I just couldn’t believe he would show us something so perverted,” she said.
Mary Ann Coleman said Woodard, who was Garcia Kaas’ supervisor at the Mint, would get in Coleman’s face and yell so vigorously that he spit on her.
“He downgraded me as a person, as a human being,” said Coleman. “I always did something wrong. I never did anything right for him.”
A male worker told U.S. District Judge Wiley Daniel how several Mint bosses would fawn over attractive women who had just been hired. Another woman said she was subjected to supervisors’ disparaging comments about Hispanics.
Garcia Kaas, who has not yet testified, sued in 2003 accusing her bosses of escalating harassment and discrimination.
It reached an apex in October 2000 when Woodard called her into his office and began to discipline her, she said.
When she tried to call for a union representative, Garcia Kaas said, Woodard took the phone from her and hurt her chest.
Shortly thereafter, she left, saying she was unable to work in close quarters with Woodard.
In federal court pleadings, attorneys representing Woodard and the U.S. Department of the Treasury have denied Garcia Kaas’ allegations that an assault occurred and that she suffered discrimination and retaliation.
Her allegations, which were the subject of an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission proceeding, were not substantiated, according to a ruling by an administrative judge in 2003.
He wrote that the complaint was a “smoke screen, a pre- emptive and defensive strike to mask and divert attention from (Garcia Kaas’) defiance and insubordination.”
Testimony continues today.
Garcia Kaas seeks back pay and damages.
Staff writer Alicia Caldwell can be reached at 303-820-1930 or acaldwell@denverpost.com.
