Four women get $175K settlement in harassment case

After four years of waiting, four hotel kitchen employees who had sued their former employer for sexual harassment in 2002 finally received their settlement checks worth $175,000 yesterday morning.

Federal Labor Ombudsman Jim Benedetto handed over the checks to the complainants at his office at the Marina Heights Building II in Puerto Rico.

Julieta Torres received $100,000; the rest of the settlement money was divided among nonresident workers Arcely Sison and Aurora Salac and a local resident who requested anonymity.

The four had filed the suit against Micro Pacific Development, Inc., the former owner of the Saipan Grand Hotel. The U.S. Employment Opportunity Commission represented the women in the suit.

Emotions were running high yesterday morning at Benedetto’s office, with one of the women giving Benedetto and caseworker and translator Glen Anthony Buultjens hugs of gratitude.

The suit alleged that the four kitchen employees were sexually harassed at the hotel by an assistant chef from 1998 to 2002, when the hotel was still owned by Micro Pacific Development.

Asia Pacific Hotels Inc., which acquired the hotel in 2005, is considered faultless in the matter.

The former employer was ordered to pay the settlement money under the terms of the Consent Decree signed by Judge Alex R. Munson.

Torres said she is greatly relieved with the result of the case. She said that all she wanted was “justice.”

She said she filed her complaint in 2002 with the CNMI Labor Department but her case did not move for a month, so she went to the Department of Public Safety but the same thing occurred. At the advice of a friend, she took her case to the Federal Ombudsman Office, where Buultjens helped them throughout the entire process.

Torres and the others said they were subjected to sexual harassment by their immediate superior, a Japanese assistant chef, who allegedly subjected female employees to physical, verbal, and visual harassment.

“These allegations were all denied and the settlement avoids a determination of what actually happened,” said the media release.

Torres has been with the same hotel for 12 years now; Sison, nine years. Both are still working for Saipan Grand Hotel, while Salac, who left the hotel in 2002, is now with the Pacific Islands Club. Salac said she would use the money for her upcoming medical treatment and surgery in the Philippines next month.

Now that the hotel is owned by Asia Pacific Hotels, the management has a totally different management style, the two said.

“It’s now better and they really take care of us. We are now comfortable with our work,” Torres said in Filipino.

The complainants urged other women who have been mistreated by their employers to come out and let the authorities know about their conditions especially when they are being harassed sexually, physically, verbally, and visually by their employers.

EEOC Honolulu local director Tim Riera said, “Sexual harassment is a continuing problem. Our agency continues to receive many sexual harassment charges involving allegations like this one, which are particularly egregious. Employers should send a clear message to the workplace that sexual harassment will not be tolerated.”