Meathead Movers—the San Luis Obispo moving company on the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) radar for alleged age discriminatory practices—shot back at the federal agency’s complaints against it.
“[The EEOC] has engaged in a years-long campaign to extract millions of dollars in ‘back wages’ from Defendant Meathead Movers Inc. that it knows the company has no ability to pay, on behalf of ‘victims’ that do not exist,” the company wrote on Feb. 1 in response to the EEOC’s September 2023 complaint. “The EEOC’s investigation was not prompted by a single complaint of age discrimination.”
The EEOC’s federal complaint claims that Meathead Movers intentionally hasn’t hired people age 40 and older since at least 2017. Following an investigation that started that year, the EEOC presented Meathead Movers with a $15 million demand to settle the case. Failed attempts to reach a conciliation agreement escalated to litigation.
In the response to the complaint, Meathead Movers denied the bulk of the EEOC’s claims, saying that the job requires strenuous physical labor like continuous jogging; alleging an improper investigation; saying that the EEOC failed to include a description of the claimed wrongdoings; and highlighting the supposed lack of victims.
“For purposes of responding to the EEOC’s charge, Meathead Movers analyzed its application files and estimated that only 15 applicants appeared to be over the age of 40 and were not hired by Meathead Movers,” the response read. “These applicants were not chosen because they either requested salaries well above the average salary for the position, they were applying for a position that was not available (for example, they were applying for a driver position but Meathead Movers was hiring for laborers), or they did not pass the requisite background check.”
Specifically, the EEOC’s complaint references fragments of hiring notes written by a hiring official that said a candidate wasn’t a “good cultural fit because of her age.” Meathead’s response claimed that those notes were written by a former employee who had no hiring power.
Founder Aaron Steed told New Times on Feb. 6 that the company discontinued the practice of having employees meet the applicants and then share their feedback with the hiring manager.
“The hiring manager has always been responsible for conducting the actual/formal interview and making the decisions on all hiring decisions,” Steed said. “At the time, this was a common practice for many high-growth and progressive companies.”
Nicole St. Germain, the EEOC’s lead outreach and education coordinator, told New Times on Feb. 7 that the agency initiated the investigation of its own accord.
“We noticed based upon how the website is and how their recruitment process was that it appeared discriminatory in nature,” she said.
She added that EEOC obtained the interview notes through that investigation, the details of which are confidential.
Cases centering on age discrimination are a focus of the EEOC’s strategic enforcement plan for 2024-28, according to St. Germain.
“From February 2023 until today, we’ve had 20 such cases in the public realm,” she said. “That means we’ve had lawsuits filed or we’ve had public resolutions about age discrimination, including one that our [Los Angeles] district resolved in December against Scripps Medical for $6.875 million.”
According to the latest EEOC data, the agency entered into 794 settlements in fiscal year 2022—the lowest number since fiscal year 2000, when it tallied 1,156 settlements. The Los Angeles district that filed the lawsuit against Meathead Movers spans from Central California to San Diego and the border, including to central and southern Nevada, and also covering Hawaii, Guam, Wake Island, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands.
St. Germain said that the recruitment practices of Meathead Movers are carried out in a way that causes a chilling effect on those who may want to apply.
“Even though we did not have an individual who filed a complaint, and this was a directed charge against Meathead Movers, we have still found a number of victims in this case,” she said. “We’re constantly still looking for individuals who may have been affected not only by their hiring practice but also their recruitment practice.” Δ
This article appears in Health & Wellness 2024.
So, if there are no victims, where exactly do all of these millions of dollars go? Into the pockets of the EEOC? Isn’t this department already funded by our tax dollars? meathead movers has legitimate reasons for not hiring laborers over the age of 40. They also have documented proof of why these few applicants were not hired. They have in fact, hired individuals, over the age of 40, for other positions. This screams of persecution by our government of this small business.