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WASHINGTON, June 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Eagle Global Logistics may be the "poster child" for the contractor responsibility regulations President Bush is trying so hard to scuttle. The Houston-based freight-forwarding giant repeatedly has broken the nation's civil rights laws, discriminating against hundreds of jobseekers and its own workers based on their race, gender, age and national origin, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
Nevertheless, this past spring the new Bush Administration shrugged off Eagle's workplace violations and awarded the company a multi-million-dollar Pentagon contract. Eleven other firms had bid for the work, but the Administration selected Eagle to handle $33 million worth of freight shipments for Defense Department facilities in Alabama, Florida and Georgia.
Up until recently, new federal procurement rules issued under President Clinton could have helped prevent a company with a record of behavior as tattered as Eagle's from doing work for the federal government. But those rules were quietly suspended by the Bush Administration earlier this year, and now federal procurement authorities are pushing to make the suspension permanent.
In effect, the President's action makes it easier for companies like Eagle with a history of violating federal civil rights and workplace laws to still get on the federal payroll and benefit from taxpayer-funded work.
Ironically, Eagle's history of mistreating its employees and job applicants is so extreme that, in a rare move, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has joined a private discrimination lawsuit filed against Eagle by some of the company's former employees.
With revenues last year exceeding $1.8 billion, Eagle Global Logistics provides worldwide shipping and warehousing services through a workforce of 3,000 employees and a network of nearly 400 terminals in 100 countries. But Eagle's management, from the company's top executives down, also tolerates and even encourages a hostile workplace that repeatedly has mistreated and harassed its female and minority employees, according to the EEOC.
After a 2 1/2-year investigation, the federal agency in May of 2000 found that Eagle deliberately resisted hiring or recruiting women and minorities for the company's better-paying sales and management jobs. The women and minorities who did make it into those positions were paid less than white, male Eagle employees performing comparable work, the EEOC said.
In its 104-page decision, the EEOC also charged Eagle with failure to investigate numerous complaints by company employees of sexual harassment and of shredding job application records in an attempt to thwart the agency's investigation.
Among its findings, the EEOC said that Eagle:
* Told its managers not to hire black applicants and not to advertise job openings in newspapers in cities with black populations that might apply for the jobs;
* Discouraged the hiring of women of child-bearing age, supposedly because they would be less productive on the job;
* Tolerated ethnic and racist remarks and slurs and sexual harassment in the company's workplaces and business practices, including forcing employees toentertain clients at topless bars, and strip clubs;
* Ordered employees who had filed EEOC complaints to either withdraw them or refuse to cooperate with any probe by the agency.
The EEOC is seeking $20 million from Eagle as compensation for aggrieved company employees and job applicants. The EEOC took the unusual step of issuing a "commissioner's charge" against Eagle after receiving numerous race discrimina-tion complaints from employees of the company. The EEOC's subsequent investiga-tion led to its findings of a hostile work environment at Eagle and blatant violations by the company of federal anti-discrimination and fair-pay laws.
This past winter, the courts granted the EEOC its request to become a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit by former Eagle employees against the company. Agency officials have said they joined the case because of the seriousness of Eagle's illegal behavior. Meanwhile, Eagle Global Logistics can thank the Bush Administration for letting it still compete and receive federal contracts despite its controversial record.
Under the "contractor responsibility" procurement rules that were in place when President Bush took office, companies doing business with the federal government were required to have "a satisfactory record of integrity and business ethics" and a record of compliance with federal employment, environment, consumer-protection, antitrust, and tax laws.
http://tbutton.prnewswire.com/prn/11690X29393183
SOURCE Abernathy Associates
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