Big utility pays to settle discrimination complaints

Scott Sonner

Monday, Nov. 8, 1999 | 4:21 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - Sierra Pacific Power Co. has agreed to pay $211,000 to settle a discrimination case after Labor Department investigators found sexually explicit graffiti and a hanging noose during a pre-announced visit to its offices in Reno.

The settlement includes a $82,933 retirement payment to a minority worker "who felt compelled to leave the racially hostile workplace," the Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance said in a statement Monday.

It also includes nearly $100,000 in back wages for women and minority workers who were paid less than white males for performing similar jobs, and $30,000 for training and the expansion of a women's restroom that was smaller than the men's.

A spokesman for the utility said the Labor Department's account of the incidents was "very misleading and inflammatory.

"It gives the impression that problems are widespread and that simply is not true," spokesman Karl Walquist said from Sierra Pacific headquarters in Reno.

The news came as Sierra Pacific announced its purchase of Portland General Electric from the energy giant Enron Corp. of Houston in a deal worth $3 billion. The move into Oregon makes the utility one of the largest in the West, with 1.7 million customers in three states.

The department's contract compliance office discovered the problems in May during a routine review at Sierra Pacific's corporate headquarters and at a field office.

They found "name-calling and sexist jokes, derogatory flyers, caricatures, graffiti and a noose in worker areas and in restrooms," the department said. Also, the field office men's room was kept much cleaner than the women's restroom.

Angel Luevano, head of contract compliance for the Labor Department's district office in Oakland, Calif., said the utility had been cited for six violations following a compliance review in 1989 and four violations following a review in 1993.

"Sierra Pacific Power failed to correct open, pervasive discrimination which took many forms - pay disparity, racial and sexual harassment and unequal facilities," Luevano said.

"The company knew we were going to be on the site," Luevano said. "We came upon one of the supervisor's offices and there was a noose hanging in the corner."

"We also found caricatures and flyers, but not all in his office," he said. "There was graffiti on the lockers and the bathroom walls, some sexually explicit graffiti."

Luevano said investigators interpreted the presence of the noose to be racially motivated. But company officials said that "because this is the West, with hanging bank robbers and that kind of thing - that it was not necessarily intended in a racial way," he said.

"We thought it was not appropriate in the workplace regardless."

Walquist called the Labor Department statement irresponsible, since the small number of problems were limited to two of the utility's more than dozen offices in northern Nevada and no workers had complained. He also claimed that the worker quit not because of racial hostility, but over breach of contract claims.

Sierra Pacific already has taken steps "to make sure we are complying with all the laws out there pertaining to these issues," Walquist added, such as a hotline for internal complaints and an internal study on pay equity.

"If we need to make adjustments as a result of that, then that is what we are going to do," he said.