Sexual Harassment Of Waste Worker Cost City $875,000

The city of Spokane, WA, recently agreed to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit with a former wastewater employee for nearly $1 million. 
 
“Sonya O’Brien left the city after five years of harassment that included being ‘ridiculed and insulted’ by her male coworkers and using a locker room frequently defaced with urine, feces and tobacco spit, according to the lawsuit. When O’Brien filed an equal employment opportunity claim against the city for the treatment, it was shared with her coworkers without the redaction of her name,” The Spokesman-Review reported.
 
City Council President Ben Stuckart had previously argued that O'Brien's concerns had already been addressed through staffing changes in the city, The Spokesman-Review previously reported. 
 
But the city council approved the $875,000 settlement last month, according to the report. 
 
City Councilwoman Karen Stratton said before the unanimous vote that O’Brien “deserved better.” 
 
“As a former city employee, I want to personally apologize to Ms. O’Brien for the treatment she was subjected to while she worked for the City of Spokane,” Stratton said, per the report. 
 
In her original lawsuit, O'Brien sought $2.3 million from the city. 
 
Spokane Mayor David Condon's office is revising city hall's sexual harassment policies, The Spokesman-Review reported in December.
 
“The Spokane City Council already has endorsed revising the city’s sexual harassment policies based on the recommendations of Kris Cappel, a Seattle attorney who reviewed the administration’s handling of multiple complaints” against a former police official, the report said. 
 
A profile of O’Brien in Inlander describes what she endured and provides insight on the “male-dominated” working environment at the wastewater department in Spokane. The profile begins: 
 
Beginning in 2013, Sonya O'Brien began writing down, in a red, spiral-bound notebook, all the retaliation she says she received after complaining of harassment while working as an operator in the male-dominated subculture at Spokane's wastewater treatment plant: the sexualized environment, the befouled locker rooms and the dread that marked her final days before she quit.
 
O'Brien says she complained to her union representative and the city's Human Resources Department. But she says the city's response didn't end the harassment, which she says effectively ended her career in water resources.
 
"I felt like I was fighting against the world," she says. "I still do."
 
The profile also included some background on O’Brien’s life: 
 
A single mom with three kids, O'Brien earned a degree in water resources from Spokane Community College, and in 2008 took a job at the city's wastewater department, installing and monitoring equipment for the city's combined sewer overflow program. "To work in wastewater, you have to have a sense of humor. You have to have a thick skin," says O'Brien. "You're dealing with raw sewage." O'Brien describes herself as a "tough girl" accustomed to working in male-dominated environments. But this, she says, was different.
 
At first O’Brien tolerated the harassing behavior, but then it became too much, the report indicated. “The breaking point, she says, was in December 2012, when she found smeared feces in the women's locker room along with more urine and chaw spit,” according to the profile.

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