Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
By STEVE HUETTEL
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 4, 2001
About four years ago, Florida Power caught a male meter reader and female meter reader who took off in the middle of the day to deliver paint to the woman's house.
The woman also was accused of making up a reading for a condominium's pool building, according to Janice Patrick, a former meter reader and union steward who worked on the woman's case.
The way managers handled the situation proved divisive. The female reader was fired, Patrick says, while the man was suspended for five days without pay.
"The female population of that department knew where they stood," she says. "If it came to a choice of a man being terminated or a woman being terminated, they knew who would be the one to go."
The woman didn't file a discrimination complaint. But at least two other meter readers in the St. Petersburg division have.
Florida Power allowed employees in the department to make racial and gender slurs, according to a federal lawsuit filed in 1999.
Meter reader Calvester Anderson said female and minority workers got less desirable work assignments than white males and were disciplined for offenses that went unpunished for white males.
Her suit claimed that a supervisor told her to find another job if she couldn't urinate standing up like a man "or words to that effect." One male co-worker fondled himself in front of her, Anderson said. Another frequently used racial slurs and was suspended for making anti-lesbian comments about a female co-worker, according to the suit.
Florida Power argued that Anderson was moved to another department as soon as she told her supervisor about the problems, and the harassment immediately stopped. The co-workers she named denied any wrongdoing.
U.S. District Judge Richard Lazzara dismissed the case in January, ruling Anderson failed to prove supervisors knew about the problems before she reported them and that the alleged acts did not constitute a "campaign of harassment for which the utility could be held liable." Anderson has appealed the decision to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
In a discrimination complaint filed in the city of St. Petersburg last year, meter reader Deidre Dubyak charged she was refused an alternate job after suffering carpal tunnel syndrome and injuring her elbow at work.
Injured male employees got office jobs or light-duty field work, the complaint charges. Dubyak, who has since been assigned an office position, declined to comment on the complaint.
Florida Power gave classes on workplace diversity before it was acquired by North Carolina-based Progress Energy, said William Habermeyer, the new president. But he doesn't think employees "recognized the level of management commitment."
That, Habermeyer pledged, is changing. Besides learning about working with people of different backgrounds, Florida Power employees will receive classes on "civil treatment" of co-workers.
"We do not tolerate discrimination," he says. "We recognized when we got down here that we needed more emphasis on the message and the training."