Honeywell to Pay $2.15M to Settle Age-discrimination Suit

Honeywell International Inc. will pay $2.15 million to settle a federal age-discrimination lawsuit filed on behalf of former workers at the company's car-care unit. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) brought the class-action suit against the Morris Township, NJ-based industrial giant two years ago after sales managers and representatives in their 40s and 50s claimed they were called "dinosaurs" and illegally fired or demoted by the company's automotive products unit.

From The Record, Bergen County, NJ

NEWARK, NJ — Honeywell International Inc. will pay $2.15 million to settle a federal age-discrimination lawsuit filed on behalf of former workers at the company’s car-care unit.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) brought the class-action suit against the Morris Township, NJ-based industrial giant two years ago after sales managers and representatives in their 40s and 50s claimed they were called “dinosaurs” and illegally fired or demoted by the company’s automotive products unit.

“Senior management encouraged a pattern of age discrimination that harmed older workers and violated the spirit and letter of the law,” Jacqueline McNair, regional attorney of EEOC’s Philadelphia office, said when she brought the suit in June 2002.

In resolving the suit, the company denied any wrongdoing, but chose “to reach this settlement, rather than engage in protracted litigation.” At the same time, it agreed that in the future it would not lay off or select individuals for positions based on age, and would comply with all provisions of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967.

Most of the money will go to the six individuals who filed the charges – the people who “stepped forward and filed charges with the commission,” McNair said Monday.

They will receive awards ranging from $475,000, including attorney’s fees and pension benefits, to $275,000. In addition, about 25 other employees who were over 40 and were laid off from the automotive unit during its restructuring in 1997 will receive $8,000 each.

The six “charging parties” came from around the country, including Texas, Montana, Rhode Island and California, said Kenneth Lauter, their Indianapolis-based attorney.

The alleged discrimination came during a 1997 restructuring of the AlliedSignal Automotive Aftermarket unit, a Rhode Island-based division that made FRAM, Autolite, and Prestone car-care products. AlliedSignal and Honeywell merged in 1999.

In the suit, filed in federal court in Newark, NJ, the government charged that several managers in their 50s were fired despite good performance records, and that when the automotive division reorganized its sales force, 18 of the 22 sales representatives who lost their jobs were 40 or older.

In many cases, younger workers with less experience were retained or offered the jobs, the government said.

At the same time, the suit alleged, older sales representatives were put in lower-paying jobs as sales associates, rather than better-paying jobs as account executives.

The federal age discrimination law makes it illegal to deny a person an employment opportunity because of age, if the worker is 40 or older.

The suit alleged that the vice president for sales considered workers with 20 or more years’ service part of a company problem. “Those people will be bugs on AlliedSignal’s windshield. Most of the older workers make too much money for a ‘sales rep’ and we have to address that,” the suit quoted the vice president as saying.

The vice president is no longer employed by Honeywell, and the company “challenged the credibility of those statements in our discussions with the EEOC,” Honeywell spokesman Michael Timmermann said.

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