American Red Cross Faces Lawsuit Over Race Discrimination

By Sarah Fenske Mon., May 23 2011 at 8:30 AM

Categories: Community, See You in Court!

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A lawsuit alleges that a local chapter of the American Red Cross discriminated against an Illinois woman.

A telerecruiter at the American Red Cross has filed a lawsuit alleging racial, sexual and age-related discrimination after being fired last December.

Rosalind Clayton, a 48-year-old black woman, also alleges retaliation, saying she was unfairly written up for various infractions after complaining about the discrimination, and then terminated. Her suit, originally filed in the Circuit Court of St. Louis City, was transferred to federal court May 18.

In the suit, Clayton, a resident of St. Clair County, Illinois, alleges that she'd been working the day shift at the American Red Cross' facility on Lindell Boulevard. But in April 2010, she was reassigned to the night shift "so that a fellow recruiter, a white male under the age of 40, could work the day shift per his request," according to the suit.

When Clayton began complaining, however, she alleges that she was wrongly written up for excessive tardiness and placed on a 60-Day Improvement Plan "despite the fact she had an excellent employment record." She says the Red Cross created false productivity statistics and then gave her a termination notice.

"Numerous telerecruiters that were less productive than Plaintiff were not terminated or disciplined in any fashion," the suit alleges.

Clayton's attorney, Douglas Ponder of Ponder Zimmermann LLC, declined comment on the suit. When we called Clayton's old office, we got a message back saying that officials there were unaware of the lawsuit at the time of our call. We'll update this post if we get more info.

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