EEOC Files Age Discrimination Lawsuit against Mattress Firm
As the senior workforce in the country continues to age, California employment lawyers are likely to come across more cases involving discrimination against senior workers based entirely on their age. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has been taking a grim view of such occurrences. The agency recently filed a lawsuit against Texas-based Mattress Firm, alleging age-discrimination against employees.
The employees that are the focus of this lawsuit were employed at a facility in Las Vegas. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit against the company, company officials went about the deliberate process of making things very difficult for the older workers in Las Vegas. This was part of a systemic program to eliminate his older workers from the company, and replace them with younger workers.
Mattress Firm and 15 unspecified defendants have been named in the lawsuit. According to the lawsuit, a number of workers, including salespersons and store managers were all victimized as part of the company’s campaign to phase them out of the firm, and replace them with younger workers.
The discrimination is alleged to have begun after the Mattress Firm acquired the Las Vegas mattress chain back in 2007. Older workers began to feel pressure from the firm, as they received not-so-subtle signs encouraging them to quit. Older workers who did not quit, or did not give in to the pressure, were fired.
According to the lawsuit, the Mattress Firm was very stringent in its discrimination against older workers, calling older workers “set in their ways” and “resistant” to change, and naming these the reasons why these workers were being phased out and replaced with younger workers.
