Laid-off workers say rights violated

By Timothy Pratt

Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2001 | 9:39 a.m.

The agency charged with enforcing the state's equal rights laws said it has received about 42 percent more complaints from workers after Sept. 11 when compared with the same period last year.

The complaints allege the workers had been discriminated against when they were fired or when they were not hired to return to work.

"I knew we were seeing more cases, but I had no idea it was so much," said Lynda Parven, administrator for the Nevada Equal Rights Commission, after releasing the figures last week.

The agency received 952 and 968 complaints in September and October 2000, respectively, and 1,378 and 1,347 complaints in the same months of 2001 -- an increase of 41.9 percent overall.

The rate of increase in complaints is comparable to the rate of increase in laid-off workers who were receiving unemployment at the end of September when compared with the same period in 2000 -- 38 percent. However, by the end of October, there were 36,105 receiving unemployment, compared with 19,887 at the same time in 2000 -- an increase of 82 percent.

The complaints claim discrimination based on race, ethnicity, age, disabilities, religion and gender -- or all the categories the law covers.

Examples of cases the agency has received include elderly employees who said they were laid off because they were close to retirement or commanded higher wages than younger employees, and Hispanics who said they were fired due to their ethnic background.

There were also cases of people who said they had complained about working conditions before and were fired for this reason. Others said they were passed over when employees were called back to work, said Billie Bailey, investigator for the commission.

"When the economy has a downturn and people get laid off, there will always be a lot of people who feel they were singled out for unfair reasons," said Parven.

"At the same time, it's hard to say whether these complaints will turn out without probable cause or not. If they do have just cause, then we will be paying more attention to educating employers in the future," she said.

A complaint takes about 315 days to resolve and about half of all cases are found to be without probable cause. The commission's Las Vegas office has six investigators and hopes to hire three more in the coming weeks to help deal with the increased caseload.

"We've absolutely been caught by surprise, and we're doing our best to keep up with the complaints," said Bailey.