Three women have sued the Vermont Department of Corrections alleging they have more seniority but are paid as much as $10,000 less than a male employee who performs the same job.
The suit also alleges the department breeched hiring protocol by hiring an over-qualified employee for a food service job and allowed him to keep an overinflated salary when he transferred to a different job within DOC.
An attorney for the department said Thursday pay decisions are based on business practices and unrelated to gender.
The Vermont Human Rights Commission is also a plaintiff in the suit. The complaint alleges that Lynne Silloway is paid nearly $10,000 less than the male employee, referred to in the suit as Doe.
Mary Bertrand is paid nearly $6,400 less, the suit alleges. It says Silloway and Bertrand both had more seniority than Doe but both were paid less than him.
Lisa DeBlois is paid approximately $10,200 less, despite having been promoted to the same position 45 days after Doe, the suit says.
Attorneys for the women and the Human Rights Commission this month filed a motion for summary judgment in the case in Washington County Superior Court, meaning there are no disputed facts, and the plaintiffs are asking for a judgment without a full trial and based on the merits of the entire case.
Katherine Kramer and Emily Joselson at the firm Langrock, Sperry & Wool are representing the women. “Gender bias is often subtle and unspoken,” they wrote. “But it is incontrovertible that gender bias in the workplace still persists, even when silent or unintentional.”
All three women and their male colleague have the job title “administrative service coordinator IV” at four separate correctional facilities, according to court documents.
Doe was hired in 2003 as a “Food Service Supervisor” and was transferred to “Business Manager A” in 2006, according to the suit.
Corrections has a hiring system that has 15 “steps” within each pay grade, the suit says. Employees accrue steps over time or by merit.
Doe was hired at the 13th step instead of the first, the suit alleges. That meant he made $19.94 an hour instead of $13.65, a difference of $13,000 annually, according to the suit.
DOC has a policy known as “hire-in-range” that allows for deviations to the step system when there is a desperate need to fill a position and if doing so does not create pay inequities for incumbent employees.
The complaint alleges circumstances were not compelling enough to justify hiring Doe or paying him a salary that “deviated so significantly from the state’s classification system.”
Doe was “unusually well-qualified” and chosen over nine qualified applicants, according to the suit. He had an applicable college degree and 25 years experience, the suit alleges, while the position only required a high school diploma and four years cooking experience.
The suit acknowledges that typically DOC does not hire over-qualified employees.
The suit also alleges DOC failed to make required pay equity reports when transferring the male employee to his new position in 2006, “Business Manager A.”
Instead, he brought his higher salary as well as a required 8 percent pay raise, to the new position and started at $24.42 per hour, the suit says.
Female employee Silloway had been Business Manager A since 2003 and was earning $19.72 per hour. The other two women were earning $21 an hour and $18.48 an hour at that same job, the suit alleges.
The suit asks DOC to pay compensatory and punitive damages including attorney’s fees. The law governing equal pay says an employer will be liable for double the amount of underpaid wages.
Assistant Attorney General David Groff represents DOC in the case. Groff Thursday said the hiring and salary decisions were fair.
The state also plans to file its own motion for summary judgment in the state’s favor, Groff said.
“We think that the hiring and salary decisions underlying this case were based on legitimate, lawful business-related factors, that they were wholly unrelated to gender, that they were proper at the time they were made,” Groff said in a phone interview.
Pay at DOC is almost exclusively determined by collective bargaining agreements, he said. Union contracts set hiring salaries and pay increases. Doe and the three women are in the same union, he said.
Groff said Doe originally started in another job, then moved to the same position as the women.
In the first job, Doe started at a higher salary than normal because he was overqualified and because the job desperately needed to be filled at that time, Groff said.
When Doe moved to the other job, he carried the salary with him and therefore made more than the women in that same job.
“The Department of Corrections is committed to gender equity in hiring and salary decisions,” Groff said.
Groff, who said he has practiced with the Attorney General’s office for 15 years, is not aware of another DOC pay discrimination case, or a pay discrimination case in any other state department.
