A class-action lawsuit charging Ford Motor Co. with sexual harassment has expanded to include complaints from dozens more female workers, including workers at a second Chicago-area plant.
Crain’s Chicago Business reported today that the amended complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, alleges harassment of women at the Ford stamping plant in Chicago Heights.
The original lawsuit,filed in November, was brought by four women at Ford’s Torrence Avenue assembly plant on Chicago’s South Side.
“It shows the problem is much broader than . . . alleged in our original lawsuit,” Crain’s quoted Chicago lawyer Keith Hunt, who is representing the plaintiffs, as saying during a press briefing yesterday. “What it really shows is this has been part of an ongoing and continuous environment in these plants that has never really been effectively remediated.”
Ford responded in an emailed statement that it takes the allegations “very seriously” and has a “zero-tolerance anti-harassment policy.”
Thirty-three women are now plaintiffs in the lawsuit; 31 have worked or currently work at the assembly plant, and two at the stamping plant.
This isn’t the first sexual harassment lawsuit brought against these particular plants. Crain’s reports that in 2000, Ford settled a class-action complaint of sexual harassment with a group of female workers.
