A former employee has filed a sex discrimination and retaliation lawsuit against poultry processing facility.
Barbara Brown filed her complaint December 12 in federal court against DG Foods Inc, which has a location in Bastrop. It is a poultry processing and portioning company.
According to the complaint, Brown was hired as a line worker at the Bastrop plant in February 2014. She was promoted to production supervisor in 2016.
On November 28, 2022, Brown says an assistant plant manager named Craig asked her to come to his office to provider him with her shift notes. She said it was uncharacteristic because she had consistently given her shift notes to Plant Manager Wesley Carter for the previous two years.
When she later entered Craig’s office and gave him her notes, Brown says Craig grabbed her hand and began to caress it.
“Plaintiff pulled her hand away and asked Craig what he was doing,” the complaint states. “Craig responded with a suggestive and sexually charged expression. Plaintiff refused the advance.”
Brown says she left Craig’s office and immediately notified Murrell Corps, another assistant plant manager, of the incident. She says Corps dismissed the incident and asked her not to report it to Human Resources.
Soon after, Brown says she began to experience “significant retaliation.”
She says Craig began making excessive demands on her and began to closely monitor her work performance, including hovering over her work area and frequently reprimanding her. She says no other employee was subjected to such behavior.
On December 8, 2022, Brown says she was transferred to a different work area, where she was given a heavier workload and was assigned job tasks that were not part of her position or department. She says she did not receive any change in pay to reflect the additional tasks.
When she reported her concerns to Shift Manager Gene Bradford, Brown says she also told him she felt her transfer was retaliatory after rejecting Craig’s sexual advances.
Hours after complaining to Bradford, Brown says she was terminated.
“The reason given for termination was for allegedly not putting ice on a product,” the complaint states. “However, throughout the entire course of plaintiff’s employment, she had been instructed to only place ice on a product if a mechanical error caused a lull in production. No such lull had occurred during the alleged event for which plaintiff was terminated.”
Brown says the company has transferred, given addition job duties and ultimately terminated at least one other woman in the same plant after she turned down unwelcome sexual proposition by management.
She accuses the defendant of employment discrimination on the basis of sex, quid pro quo sexual harassment, hostile work environment and retaliation.
Brown seeks back pay, front pay and lost benefits as well as compensatory damages for future pecuniary and non-pecuniary losses including emotional pain, suffering, inconvenience, mental anguish and loss of enjoyment of life. She also seeks punitive damages, pre- and post-judgment interests, attorney fees, court costs and other relief.
She also seeks an order requiring defendant to provide training regarding sexual harassment and retaliation.
Brown is being represented by Philip Bohrer of Bohrer Brady in Baton Rouge and by Jay D. Ellwanger and Brian Pounds of Ellwanger Henderson in Austin, Texas.
U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana case number 3:24-cv-1728