Dive Brief:
- GFL Environmental subsidiaries in Georgia are in the process of finalizing a consent decree meant to end a workplace discrimination lawsuit from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
- The lawsuit, filed in September 2023, alleged that GFL, along with subsidiaries Waste Industries U.S.A, Waste Industries Atlanta and TransWaste Services, routinely refused to hire qualified women applicants for truck driver positions. The companies instead gave the jobs to less qualified male applicants, the lawsuit alleges.
- The EEOC and the GFL subsidiaries announced on Aug. 12 that they had reached “an agreement in principle.” The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia’s Atlanta division will close the case unless the EEOC or the waste companies request otherwise within 60 days.
Dive Insight:
If finalized, the consent decree would end a year-long legal process examining the sex discrimination claims. The EEOC claims the company has been discriminating against women applicants since at least 2016. GFL bought Waste Industries in late 2018.
The lawsuit centers mainly on one job applicant, who said she experienced numerous roadblocks to getting hired in 2018. The applicant had a valid commercial drivers license and more than five years of driving experience, which exceeded the three-year minimum required to apply for the job, according to the case. The operating manager in charge of the job interview told the applicant that she would be “taking the job away from a man.”
The EEOC said in a statement last year that multiple other female applicants have experienced similar issues when applying at the named Georgia locations. These applicants “were subjected to derogatory comments about their feminine appearance” or asked why they would “want a man’s job.” Women who applied were also asked if they could lift the trash bins and handle the strong odors and getting dirty, according to court filings.
These locations “always have open driver positions due to high turnover, [and its] hiring process is uniform across all branches in Georgia,” the lawsuit said, but despite repeated rounds of hiring, there are “statistically significant hiring shortfalls for females in driver positions,” according to court documents.
GFL has not yet responded to a request for comment. GFL’s 2022 ESG report says the company overall is focused on hiring more women, noting that 17.4% of its total workforce were women in 2022, an increase of 5.5% from the previous year.
The anticipated consent decree follows earlier court appearances in May, where the waste companies filed a motion to dismiss the complaint. In it, the companies said the EEOC did not provide enough evidence to show that Waste Industries U.S.A., TransWaste Services, and GFL Environmental “behaved as a single entity.” The companies also called for narrowing the scope of the case to the complaint made by the applicant in 2018. The court denied the motion.
In a separate case also announced in 2023, the EEOC filed a lawsuit against Allied Waste Services of the Ozarks, a subsidiary of Allied Services owned by Republic, alleging that the company discriminated against female applicants. That case centers on a woman who said she applied for a role as a front loader driver but was passed over for a male applicant with less experience, according to court documents. Discovery motions in that case are due in November, according to court documents.
The EEOC is also working through another lawsuit against Waste Pro of Florida. That lawsuit, announced in September 2023, alleged racial harassment and retaliation at its Jacksonville, Florida, location. In the complaint, the EEOC said the company “subjected Black employees to racist slurs and then retaliated against them for complaining about the behavior.” Waste Pro has said it investigated the issue and took corrective action, and that it “prides itself on treating its employees fairly and professionally.” That lawsuit is ongoing.