Former Worcester Wreaths factory workers allege harassment, retaliation in federal lawsuit

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Two people who worked at the Worcester Wreaths factory and lived in company accommodation in 2018 filed a federal complaint against the company, alleging discrimination, sexual harassment and unlawful retaliation.

Walesca Rodriguez and Richard Rivera, a woman and man from Puerto Rico, allege that in late 2018, while working at the Worcester Wreaths factory in Columbia Falls and living in a corporate dormitory in Harrington, an employment contractor sexually harassed Rodriguez on several occasions at work and in the dorm.

Rivera, who was friends with Rodriguez, told the contractor to leave Rodriguez alone and stop harassing her and the other women in the dorm, according to court documents.

After the harassment continued, Rodriguez and Rivera called on Worcester Wreath officials to intervene, but instead they were charged with breaking company rules, fired from their jobs and kicked out of the dorm, according to the complaint.

The alleged acts constitute violations of federal law prohibiting discrimination in the workplace, the Federal Fair Housing Act, the Maine Human Rights Act, and the Thrower Protection Act. alert, said the former workers.

In 2019, the couple filed separate complaints for the same allegations with the Maine Human Rights Commission, which then supported some of their claims but dismissed others.

In the lawsuit, which was filed last week in federal court in Bangor, Rodriguez and Rivera seek unspecified pecuniary damages, including wage arrears, and a court order preventing further violations of national laws and relevant federal authorities, including mandatory civil rights training for the company concerned. officials and employers of the Worcesters Crown Manufacturing Company.

The court complaint says that although company documents may suggest the couple were formally employed by Damian Mejia and Brianna Mejia-Bouchard, the contractor in question and his wife, they were misclassified and in fact worked as de facto employees of the company by receiving training, assignments and work schedules provided or decided by Worcester Wreaths supervisors. In addition, workers were under the impression that they and the Mejias were directly employed by Worcester Wreaths, according to the court complaint.

The Federal Court complaint does not name the Mejias as defendants in the lawsuit.

About 800 people work at the Worcester Wreath Manufacturing Company, which manufactures wreaths for retail sale and supplies wreaths to Wreaths Across America, a non-profit entity that lays wreaths on graves in veterans across the country during the holiday season.

Earlier this year, a Maine Human Rights Commission investigator concluded that there were reasonable grounds to conclude that the husband and wife’s contracting team had violated the rights of both workers, but that there were no reasonable grounds to conclude that the crown company had done so. In June, the commission then backed investigators’ findings, but two of its five members said they believed there were reasonable grounds to conclude that Worcester Wreaths had violated Rodriguez’s housing rights.

Timothy Woodcock, Worcester Wreaths attorney in the case, said on Tuesday the court’s complaint only repeated the same arguments the commission rejected.

Rodriguez and Rivera are trying to challenge the same claims they lost at the Maine Human Rights Commission, Woodcock said. Their claims have no basis. Worcester will vigorously defend these unjust and unjust allegations.

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