A group of female and Hispanic Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) employees filed a class action complaint yesterday against their employer with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. Lawyers for the workers wrote in the complaint that women and Hispanic workers “pigeonholed in entry-level positions” and “remain grossly underpaid compared to their similarly situated non-Latino and male counterparts,” according to Metro International. The complaint also cited disparate termination rates for women and Hispanic workers. Craig Dias, a MBTA worker and founder of the Latino Alliance of the MBTA told the Boston Herald that the workers are “not asking for special treatment” and that the complaint was filed due to worker frustration with MBTA’s track record of slow processing of discrimination complaints. Massachusetts state Transportation Secretary Jeffrey Mullan told the media that officials have not seen the complaint yet, but that the MBTA’s diversity office agreed last week that the system indeed has difficulty recruiting women and minorities, according to the Boston Globe. Mullan promised at a MBTA board meeting last week to conduct a full-scale review of MBTA’s processes for handling discrimination complaints and issues related to hiring women and minorities.
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