IF THEY WERE 45 YEARS OR OLDER, RAISES WERE WRONGFULLY CAPPED
In a press release issued in mid-November, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced that that a federal judge had found that Urbana School District No. 116, in Illinois, had violated federal law by capping raises of teachers who were 45 years-of-age or older because the district didn’t want to contribute to the Teacher’s Retirement System to cover the increased pension costs.
Because it believed such conduct violated The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), the EEOC filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois, Urbana Division (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Urbana School District No. 116 and Urbana Education Association, IEA-NEA; Civil Action No. 18-cv-02212), and a judge eventually found in the EEOC’s favor.
In addition to ordering that the district remit some $51,093 in back pay, the EEOC will be seeking “additional disputed lost wages in further court proceedings.”
In a written statement, Diane Smason, acting district director of the EEOC’s Chicago District, noted that “The impact of the provision limiting salary increases is that many teachers like Mr. [name deleted] had lower raises than they could have earned through obtaining education credits …. In addition, some teachers who performed extra duties were paid less than they should have been, and others were told they could not perform extra duties at all because they would hit the salary increase cap. None of that would have happened if those teachers were younger than 45.”
That policy got old real fast ….
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