Updated at 7:54 p.m.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against Elderwood at Burlington, a long-term care facility, alleging it failed to protect its employees from ”ongoing and egregious racial harassment.”
White patients and residents at the Burlington facility have repeatedly called Black nurses and nurse assistants racial slurs since 2020, according to a press release issued by the EEOC, the federal agency charged with enforcing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“One patient repeatedly told Black employees to ‘go back to Africa’; followed Black employees throughout the facility so as to racially berate them; and physically assaulted Black employees because of their race,” the commission said in the release.
Though Elderwood’s managers and supervisors witnessed some of the incidents, the commission alleges, they did not stop the behavior or protect the employees. The commission argues that the conduct of Elderwood managers violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of race.
“Elderwood told the Black employees that its residents could say what they wanted at the facility,” the EEOC said. “In response to one complaint by a Black nurse, an Elderwood manager told her that she should be used to being the target of racial slurs because she ‘is from the South.’”
The New North End facility has been owned since 2019 by Elderwood, a regional nursing home chain that is a division of New York City-based Post Acute Partners.
Chuck Hayes, a spokesperson for the company, said it is aware of the EEOC’s complaint. While declining to comment further, he said Elderwood at Burlington “does not tolerate harassment of any kind, and prides itself on promoting a culture of diversity and inclusion.”
“All reports of inappropriate resident behavior are investigated and addressed,” he said. “We will vigorously defend our efforts to protect our staff from racial harassment.”
The EEOC filed its complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont on Tuesday. Gwendolyn Young Reams, acting general counsel for the commission, signed the document, along with Jeffrey Burstein, a regional attorney, and Kimberly Cruz, a supervisory trial attorney.
The commission seeks injunctive relief, which would prevent the company from “maintaining a racially hostile work environment,” and asks that the court order Elderwood to “institute and carry out policies, practices, and programs that provide equal employment opportunities for Black employees and that eradicate the effects of its past and present unlawful employment practices.”
It also asks the court to compensate the six employees who filed charges by paying them for past and future financial losses; the emotional pain and humiliation they experienced; and in response to Elderwood’s “malicious and reckless conduct.” The commission is also seeking payment for its legal expenses.
‘Constant and ongoing’
Elderwood subjected six employees, listed in the complaint, and other employees to pervasive harassment because they were Black, and “by maintaining and failing to address a hostile work environment because of their race (Black),” the EEOC attorneys said in the complaint.
White residents in two units of the facility repeatedly called the employees racist slurs, including the n-word, “coons,” “monkeys,” and other racially offensive epithets, commission attorneys said.
The same white male who often told employees to “go back to Africa” made “race-based threats and race-based assaults including, but not limited to stating that he wished that he could hang Black employees and that he wanted to get a gun to shoot Black employees,” the complaint said.
He also punched an employee while shouting racial epithets, intentionally hit a different employee with a walker, smacked another and placed his finger on an employee’s face while threatening her, according to the complaint.
Race-based comments were “constant and ongoing,” attorneys said. The white male wasn’t only problematic during shifts in which the employees were directly assigned to him; he would sit in a main hallway of the facility “to engage in the above-described barrage of racist statements, regardless of who was assigned to care for him,” attorneys said.
Lawyers at the commission described the various ways supervisors and members of management allegedly knew about the abuse.
They personally observed employees “being subjected to unwelcome race-based comments and conduct, including but not limited to Elderwood’s Director of Nursing, various Nurse Supervisors, and various Unit Managers,” according to the complaint.
Employees allegedly complained to Elderwood’s administrator, the director of nursing, the head of human resources, a regional nurse consultant and unit managers. At least three supervisors and managers attended a meeting during which employees complained about the harassment. One employee filed a complaint through a company hotline. Employees filed notes about the harassment in patient care files, which management reviewed.
The abuse, lawyers noted in the complaint, was also chronicled in a 2020 Seven Days article, in which five employees who had worked throughout the country said they experienced unparalleled harassment and racism at Elderwood, coupled with inaction from supervisors.
Elderwood did not correct the problem, lawyers said, and instead told employees “on several occasions that it was ‘’the resident’s right,’ or similar words to the same effect, to ‘say what they want’ — including the use of racial slurs — at Elderwood.”
The company denied the harassment took place. Before the 2020 Seven Days article was published, “the sole effort” of Elderwood to address the harassment was to move the offending male resident to other facilities, but that transfer didn’t take place, according to the complaint.
After the story was published, Elderwood responded by meeting with the commissioner of Vermont’s Department of Disabilities and Aging to “discuss the fallout from the Seven Days article,” which “did not result in any effective remedial action.” The company continued to attempt to transfer the resident, but the transfer did not happen, commission lawyers said.
“Because Elderwood took no prompt or effective remedial action, the race-based comments and conduct continued unabated from March 2020 through the remainder of the Aggrieved Individuals’ respective periods of employment at Elderwood,” lawyers said.
Before it filed its lawsuit, lawyers with the agency attempted to reach a pre-litigation settlement through the EEOC’s conciliation process.
On March 23, 2022, the EEOC sent letters on behalf of six employees saying that the agency believed Elderwood had violated Title VII. Each employee filed a charge of discrimination.
The commission invited Elderwood to “to join with the Commission in informal methods of conciliation to endeavor to eliminate the unlawful employment practices and provide appropriate relief,” the EEOC’s complaint said.
The EEOC was unable to secure an acceptable agreement for the six employees, the complaint said, and on June 7, 2022, the commission issued a “notice of failure of conciliation” for any of the six employees.
In a statement on Tuesday, Timothy Riera, acting director of the EEOC’s New York District Office, called the harassment “especially grotesque.”
“An employer cannot ignore egregious racial harassment simply because the harassers are long-term care facility residents,” he said.
