A grocery store in Alabama has agreed to pay $50,000 to settle a sexual harassment complaint brought by employees who alleged that a regular customer routinely groped them over the course of “several years.”
Women employed by the Pic-N-Sav grocery store based in Evergreen, Ala. repeatedly complained to supervisors about a regular customer who would subject them to unwanted touching, according to AL.com.
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a lawsuit against the grocery store.
According to the suit, the store failed to enforce a trespass notice that barred the customer from the premises after a female employee called police in June 2020.
Pic-N-Sav is owned by Houchens Food Group, a Kentucky-based company. The Post has reached out to Houchens Food Group seeking comment.
The EEOC will pay $50,000 to one victim of the harassment.
The company has also pledged to put in place procedures and policies protecting its female employees from sexual harassment.
The store will be required to conduct annual compliance training in its 16 locations scattered throughout Alabama.
“An employer has a duty to protect its employees from a hostile environment of frequent or serious sexual harassment when it knows of the ongoing harassment,” Bradley Anderson, district director of EEOC’s Birmingham office, said.
“It is an unacceptable and unlawful practice to ignore complaints and continue to allow such misconduct, even from a customer.”
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
