An Amazon worker who allegedly endured homophobic slurs and other harassment at a fulfillment center in Hazel Park, Michigan, has been cleared to take her retaliation claim to trial after a district court found the company’s reason for terminating her may have been pretextual (Williams v. Amazon.com Services LLC).
The employee worked in the fulfillment center’s dispatch department and, as part of her role, interacted regularly with third-party delivery partners, or flex drivers, who picked up and delivered packages from the facility. While in dispatch, the worker allegedly faced “intense” harassment from flex drivers based on her sexuality, including homophobic slurs “once or twice a week.” She reported at least three separate incidents, the latest one occurring in October 2022.
In a meeting around the same time involving an HR representative and her supervisor, the worker expressed frustration at the lack of action from her superiors to address the harassment. She went on to discuss the complaints with the company’s ethics committee. After talking to the ethics committee, the worker said her supervisor’s and the HR rep’s “whole attitude changed” and they became “very rude” and she felt she had a “target on [her] back.” The worker was moved to a different department to minimize interaction with flex drivers, however.
In December, after the HR rep closed her complaint “for lack of evidence,” the worker again complained about Amazon’s failure to address the harassment and asked to be assigned to a different supervisor. Roughly one week later, the same supervisor met with her about her alleged failure to properly check flex drivers’ routes and wrote her up as insubordinate. The HR rep and a site leader decided to fire her based on the report shortly thereafter.
The worker argued the termination amounted to retaliation in violation of the Michigan Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act.
While Amazon argued the termination resulted from legitimate, insubordinate conduct, the court found sufficient evidence for a jury to determine it was pretextual and retaliatory. Both the supervisor and HR rep knew of her complaints and changed their behavior, Judge Robert White said. The worker’s site leader called her a “good” and “hard” worker. And damningly, the judge noted, the supervisor admitted during a deposition that she provided the worker contradictory guidance to the conduct she complained of in the worker’s write-up.
“The last fact suggests that [the supervisor] intentionally omitted relevant information to make the write-up more damning than it originally was; clear evidence of a pretext designed to mask retaliation,” Judge White wrote.
While the retaliation claim will move forward, Judge White dismissed some of the worker’s other claims. For example, it found she did not face a hostile work environment because Amazon worked to minimize or eliminate harassment by involving security and working to ban the abusive drivers.
“We don’t tolerate discrimination, harassment, or retaliation in our workplace,” Montana MacLachlan, an Amazon spokesperson, told HR Dive. “We investigate any reports of such conduct and take appropriate action against anyone found to have violated our policies.”