The parent company of the 99 Ranch Market chain was sued Tuesday in Los Angeles by employment regulators for allegedly violating federal law by firing and otherwise discriminating against non-Chinese workers based on their national origin, officials announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleged that Tawa Supermarket Inc. terminated recently hired non-Chinese managers at multiple locations. Tawa also allegedly subjected non-Chinese store-level employees to discrimination by failing to promote them because they are not Chinese, paying them less than Chinese workers, and scheduling them for fewer work hours than Chinese counterparts, according to the suit filed in federal court.<\/p>\n
As a result, regulators contend, some non-Chinese workers felt they had no choice but to resign.<\/p>\n
A Tawa Supermarket representative could not immediately be reached for comment.<\/p>\n
According to the EEOC\u2019s lawsuit, the alleged violations occurred since at least 2016, following a leadership change.<\/p>\n
The family owned supermarket chain has at least 66 locations across multiple states, including many in Southern California, according to the Buena Park-based company.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe EEOC will not hesitate to bring litigation to make clear to employers that cultural preference regarding the composition of their workforce does not insulate them from liability,\u201d Catherine Eschbach, acting general counsel for the EEOC, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cPreferences based on protected characteristics are simply a form of illegal discrimination under Title VII,\u201d she said. \u201cThat the employer here is a Chinese supermarket chain does not provide license to terminate non-Chinese managers or otherwise discriminate against non-Chinese workers in employment terms and conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the EEOC, the conduct alleged in the complaint violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on national origin. The EEOC said it filed suit in Los Angeles federal court after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement.<\/p>\n
\u201cCustomer preference or beliefs that workers from certain groups are more productive do not justify national origin discrimination,\u201d said Christine Park-Gonzalez, director of the EEOC\u2019s Los Angeles bureau. \u201cEmployers must follow federal law and not exclude workers due to national origin.\u201d<\/p>\n
99 Ranch Market was established in 1984 by Taiwanese immigrant Roger Chen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The parent company of the 99 Ranch Market chain was sued Tuesday in Los Angeles by employment regulators…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":632582,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[382,1582,276,16956,49469,2961,224,5337,9106,366004,48232,28135],"class_list":["post-904233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-alleged","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-discrimination","tag-feds","tag-la","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-market","tag-non-chinese","tag-ranch","tag-sued"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116841885663072104","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}