Federal officials are suing a Durango McDonald’s franchise, alleging that teenage female employees were repeatedly sexually harassed at work, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced Wednesday.
Mary Jo O’Neill, EEOC’s regional attorney in Phoenix who has jurisdiction over Colorado, said this is part of a continuing crackdown on workplaces where young people are sexually harassed by their employers.
O’Neill said that in 2005, the EEOC filed a lawsuit against a McDonald’s franchise in Albuquerque where a male manager was accused of soliciting sex with boys who worked there. A second lawsuit was filed against another McDonald’s franchise in Cordes Junction, Ariz., where teenage girls were allegedly groped, O’Neill said.
“We don’t want these young people subjected to illegal and intolerable behavior,” O’Neill said. “It’s not OK.”
The EEOC alleged in the Colorado lawsuit filed Tuesday that several young women employed at the Durango restaurant were subjected to a sexually hostile workplace, which included verbal and physical harassment.
The alleged harassment consisted of lifting the women’s shirts and biting their breasts, “spying” on them when they changed their uniforms and offering them money, car keys and credit cards in exchange for sex.
John and Celia Bronson, the owners of the McDonald’s franchise, released a statement through McDonald’s.
“As members of the Durango community for the past 28 years, nothing is more important to us than the safety and well-being of our employees and customers. It is not appropriate to discuss pending litigation,” they said. McDonald’s declined to discuss the other EEOC actions.
The federal agency claimed that the harassment at the Durango McDonald’s, 209 E. Jenkins Road, had been going on since at least 2002, but none of the alleged harassers were named in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, claims the inner thighs and buttocks of the teenagers were groped and they were pulled onto the laps of male employees.
In the Albuquerque case, the EEOC alleged that teenage male employees were subjected to same-sex harassment by a male supervisor, including touching, requests for sex and sexual remarks. That lawsuit further claimed that one young male employee’s work hours were cut in retaliation for opposing the sexual harassment.
In the Cordes Junction case, the EEOC alleged that the sexual harassment of teenage female employees by a male assistant manager included rubbing their stomachs, grabbing their breasts and backing them against a wall while rubbing up against them.
Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
