A Souderton woman says a local business retaliated by firing her when she went to a company official to get relief from co-workers’ anti-Jewish comments.
A lawsuit recently filed on behalf of the woman asks that she be rehired by Clayton H. Landis Company Inc., of Franconia, receive payment for lost earnings, and get compensation for the emotional distress suffered from the situation.
The lawyer for the company, which is also known as CHL Systems, says the lawsuit has no merit.
The lawsuit gives the following account:
Amy Elsner was hired on Sept. 10, 2007, as a full-time document control specialist.
During the first few weeks on the job, as two of her co-workers were talking, one said her former employer did not pay his workers well and was “cheap.”
Another woman replied that, “Oh, he must have been Jewish,” according to the lawsuit.
After Elsner said she was Jewish, the woman said, “Oh, no offense.”
On another occasion, when Elsner tried to join a pre-Christmas conversation that included religious issues, a member of the Landis family told her, “Well, you’re Jewish, so you don’t know what we are talking about,” according to the lawsuit. Although Elsner said her husband was not Jewish and they celebrated both Christmas and Hanukkah, she was rejected in her efforts to join the conversation.
The situation came to a head, though, on Jan. 23, 2008, after Elsner heard the woman who in the earlier encounter said Jews are cheap, and who worked in the same room as Elsner, saying over the telephone that Jews are “such cheap (profanity),” according to the lawsuit.
Elsner went outside the building to try to calm down, but after returning a few minutes later, found she was still too upset to work and went home for lunch break, according to the lawsuit.
In a call to the company’s human resources office, she said that she was not sure she could go back to working around the person who made those comments, according to the lawsuit.
The human resources representative Elsner was speaking with said she would talk to the head of human resources and have him call back, which happened about 20 minutes later.
After asking what had happened and being told, the man said, “We don’t condone that type of behavior here,” but also said that “we feel that it would be best if we parted ways,” according to the lawsuit.
The company claims the firing decision was made before Elsner called and that it was based on poor performance, said Julie Uebler, of Rubin, Fortunato & Harbison, Paoli, Elsner’s attorneys.
“That’s an awful interesting coincidence in our point of view,” Uebler said.
“The real reason CHL terminated Mrs. Elsner’s employment was because (1) of her religion (Jewish) and race (Jewish ancestry); and/or (2) she complained about religious (Jewish) and race (Jewish ancestry) discrimination by her colleagues,” the lawsuit claims.
According to the lawsuit, Elsner was told she and the company “didn’t make a good fit.”
About two months after starting the job, Elsner’s supervisor had told her to try to work more quickly, but during a later evaluation, he said she had improved and was doing a good job and, on a written evaluation form, rated her work as “average” or “above average” and recommended that she be given the “regular employment” designation, according to the lawsuit. After completion of her 90-day “introductory period,” she was classified as a regular employee.
The person named in the lawsuit as the head of CHL’s human resources department no longer works there, a reporter calling for the company’s response to the lawsuit was told.
“The company has no comment except to say that the lawsuit is totally frivolous,” Marvin Weinberg, of Fox, Rothschild, Philadelphia, the company’s attorneys, wrote in an e-mail.
Elsner is currently unemployed and the amount of financial loss continues to grow, Uebler said.
Calculations of how much is being sought in the lawsuit will be made later, but it is more than the $150,000 legal threshold for the case, according to the lawsuit.
The case was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
A judge has been assigned to the case, but no hearing dates have been set yet, Uebler said. Lawyers for the company have until Jan. 7 to file an initial answer to the lawsuit.
The case was first taken to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, with no decision reached.
On Nov. 6, the EEOC issued a Notice of Right to Sue.
Founded in 1957, Clayton H. Landis Co. provides process automation equipment and services for manufacturing.