Grower Pays $1.7 MM Lesson in Sex Discrimination Case; Lessons Widely Applicable

Table grapes aren’t Cabernet and Delano isn’t Napa Valley, but the $1.68 million lesson learned by the “Kovacevich 5” farming partnership in Tulare County should not go unheeded by growers of any sort, anywhere.

In the fall of 2002, Erica Hernandez went with a group of friend and applied for a job with Delano, California-based Kovacevich 5, which grows and harvests table grapes in Tulare County and environs. The partnership is one of the many area agribusinesses run by members of an extended Kovacevich family which has been farming the area for more than half a century.

Women Are Lazy

Kovacevich 5 rejected Hernandez and her friends. Because, according to documents filed in Fresno with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District, Kovacevich 5 didn’t hire women at all because they were lazy.

“I was upset and embarrassed when I was rejected,” she said. “Because I knew that I could do the job as well as the men.”

In a statement released on Dec. 9, Hernandez — who had already spent six years as a farmworker — said the rejection stunned her.

EEOC Finds Discrimination, But Kovacevich 5 Won’t Settle

An investigation by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) found that “[T]he grower hired zero women between 1998 and 2002, despite filling approximately 300 seasonal farm work positions every year.”

After failing to reach an out-of-court settlement with Kovacevich 5, the EEOC sued in February 2006. The EEOC was joined by Bakersfield attorney Marcos Camacho and Robert Tomás Olmos, a partner with Gloria Allred’s powerhouse of discrimination litigation, Allred, Maroko & Goldberg in Los Angeles. The out-of-court settlement was announced on the afternoon of Dec. 9.

$1.68 Million + Conditions & Lessons for Other Growers

While the class-action court settlement does not require Kovacevich 5 to admit wrongdoing, the consent decree requires an extensive series of actions and injunctive relief measures.

According to the consent decree, Kovacevich 5 and anyone associated with them is “enjoined from:
(a) discriminating against persons on the basis of sex in the hiring and/or terms and
conditions of employment;
(b) engaging in or being a party to any action, policy or practice that is intended to, or is known to them, to have the effect of deterring any applicant or denying hire to any applicant on the basis of sex; or
(c) creating, facilitating or permitting, to the extent known to them, the existence of discriminatory hiring practices based on sex.”

Many Long-Term Conditions For Compliance with Consent Decree

[Please note the following is a brief summary, You can access the entire consent decree court document here: lewisperdue.com/wineindustryinsight/kovacevichconsent-decree.pdf ]

Kovacevich 5 has agreed to:

• Prohibit any sort of retaliation.
• Post a “Statement of Zero Tolerance Policy and Equality Objectives”.
• Revise EEO and hiring policies.
• Effectively disseminate the policies and procedures to current and new employees.
• Submit the policies to the EEOC.
• Develop a complaint procedure in English and Spanish and give to all employees.
• Submit the complaint procedure to the EEOC.
• Annually submit records, documents and other writings to the EEOC for at least the next five years.
• Post a notice of the settlement in English and Spanish on portable toilets in the vineyards.
• Conduct discrimination training for all employees and supervisors.
• Verify all training with the EEOC.
• Impose discipline “up to and including termination” for managers and supervisors who discriminate.
• Create a hiring program with a goal of making women one-third of all employees.
• Verify the hiring program with quarterly reports to the EEOC.

Because this is a class action lawsuit, other women who feel they have been discriminated against can call EEOC staffer Maricela Medina at (408) 291-7354.

Other growers may want to ponder all this in light of Allred’s statement: “We look forward to more history making legal cases to win even more rights for farm workers in the future.”