A teacher-coach at South Rowan High School is one of the people who will share in a multimillion-dollar settlement with Wal-Mart, federal officials say.
Michael Landers, an English literature teacher and assistant football and track coach at South Rowan, was among the plaintiffs from 13 states who sued Wal-Mart for discrimination.
A federal judge in Sacramento, Calif., approved the $6.8-million settlement between Wal-Mart Stores and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Cari M. Dominguez, chairwoman of the federal fair employment agency, said last week that the judge’s order resolved the agency’s lawsuit as well as other suits based on the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The federal agency’s suit also covered several disabled employees’ dismissals, including one that triggered the Sacramento suit.
Landers, 26, said he filed his suit after he was fired from a Wal-Mart in Buffalo, N.Y.
A diabetic, Landers said he was fired after he and other workers took a dinner break after working six hours. Landers said he needed to eat and give himself an injection of insulin. He must adhere to strict food intake and injection schedules.
Though his supervisor warned all the workers not to leave, Landers said the other workers were allowed to return to work, while he was terminated.
Wal-Mart wouldn’t comment to a Salisbury Post reporter about Landers’ case.
Landers said he hired attorney Paul Weiss shortly after he was fired.
He said Wal-Mart claims it never knew of his diabetes. But a year before his termination, he collapsed on the Wal-Mart floor and had to be rushed to the hospital after working another long day without eating or taking an insulin injection, he said.
His supervisors were informed of Landers condition, court records say.
A N.Y. native, Landers admits to being a bit taken aback by the national attention the story has sparked. But he said he also feels vindicated.
“The fact that the EEOC came into the case — let me tell you, that’s rare,” said the strapping, black-haired Landers.
The federal agency accused Wal-Mart of using a pre-employment questionnaire that violated the Americans with Disabilities Act between Jan. 1, 1994, and Dec. 31, 1998.
Federal officials said the company illegally asked applicants about disabilities and medical conditions on a pre-employment form. If they said they needed accommodation to perform some job requirements, the employees were asked to identify what help they needed.
Federal officials called the form “an illegal screening device that Wal-Mart has not established to be job-related and required by business necessity.”
Wal-Mart admitted in Sacramento federal court in October that it used the screening at its stores between March 1994 and December 1996 and at its distribution centers from March 1994 to December 1998.
Wal-Mart will pay $3.8 million for workers who were turned down and $3 million to a fund for those workers yet to be identified. The nation’s largest retail chain agreed to abolish the questionnaire and institute several new or revised policies.
Wal-Mart is the world’s biggest retailer, with more than 4,000 stores.
“Here is an effort to make Wal-Mart change their ways’’ said Weiss, Landers’ attorney. Landers “could have hurt himself” or others.
Landers isn’t saying how he plans to use his part of the settlement.
Oh, he has enjoyed a moment or two of celebration: that wide grin rarely leaves his face; and he’s promised buddies to treat them to a night on the town — or maybe even a trip the to beach.
One thing he’s sure of, though. He’s not going let money or anything else deter him from his primary passion: teaching.
“Ijust can’t imagine doing anything else, he said. “Ijust wouldn’t be happy.”
The Associated Press also reported that Steven Sanders, who has impaired hearing, was fired from the company’s Red Buff distribution center in 1996 instead of reassigned. Sanders could not hear a scanning device’s beeping sound signaling that a product’s bar code had been read.
He will get $202,880 in back pay, interest and compensatory damages, and an unspecified job.
Two job applicants at a distribution center in Cobleskill, N.Y., also will receive payments: Carl Burch, who has back problems, will get $171,839 and John
Bendall, who is partially blind, will get $187,774.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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