Sandi Victorio said she endured unwanted advances from her boss at least twice a day. As she stood in the aisles of the clothing warehouse, she feared he would come by and try to grab her, touch her shoulder, or rub her back.
“You wouldn’t know exactly where he’d come from,” she said. “He’d act like he’s friendly, but you can tell his intentions.”
Victorio is one of three named workers in an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) civil lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court against FYC International, a Branford-based clothing and accessories manufacturer. After a lengthy investigation the EEOC found that the company had “subjected a class of female employees to a hostile work environment by harassing them because of their sex” since January 2007.
The lawsuit seeks punitive damages, compensation for emotional harm and monetary compensation.
On Wednesday, VIctorio and a coworker told their stories in detail in an interview with the Independent in their legal-aid lawyer’s office. (FYC’s attorney failed to return calls for comment for this story.)
Victorio, who is 26 and from Fair Haven (she declined to be photographed), began working in the warehouse in 2010, packing, shipping and labeling dresses. After the first month, the warehouse manager began to approach her and tell her about his personal life in detail, she said. According to the lawsuit, the warehouse operations manager has been the top ranking manager overseeing the company’s warehouses in Branford and East Haven at least since January 2007.
Over the next few months, the advances escalated, Victorio said. “Then he started asking questions, like if I would have sex with him for money, saying that he had a bunch of money to give,” she said. “He would offer me cars. He kept asking me about my personal life.”
She said he asked her if she was dating her co-worker Yosalin Gonzalez, although the two had never been romantically involved. Gonzalez, who is 27, is not named in the lawsuit, but also shared her experiences at the company in Wednesday’s interview.
Most workers were women and only a handful were men, they said. The male employees contributed to the hostile environment, in part by keeping pornographic magazines or watching pornographic videos at their work stations.
“If my boss didn’t do nothing, who could help us?” Gonzalez said. She was afraid to pick up her check from her boss’s office on paydays.
“He used to close the door when you were in his office,” Victorio said. “He would close the shades, close the door and hold your checks to the end.” Employees would have to walk into his office one-by-one to receive their checks, and the manager would hold the women back to ask them personal or sexual questions, she said.
“Everybody gets out at 4 p.m., and we would get out at 4:30 p.m.,” Gonzalez said.
EEOC contacted the company for an informal mediation process on July 13, 2014, which the company rejected a month later. The lawsuit says the women’s discrimination was primarily based on their sex, but Gonzalez and Victorio said ethnicity and sexual orientation also factored into the way they were treated.
Victorio said that “there was talk” that she was in a relationship with a woman, and the manager approached her to ask if the couple would join him in a threesome.
“He told me he could tell [I was attracted to women] because of the way that I walk,” she said.
Gonzalez said she and many other women are Latina immigrants, afraid that speaking out against the manager would invite investigation of their legal status. Gonzalez herself did not join the original lawsuit, because “at that point [she] didn’t have [her] papers.”
She, Victorio and four other women were fired by the company in 2011 directly after Hurricane Irene. They said they refused to work in the dark during a power outage, because it was dangerous, and were given notice soon after.
THOMAS MACMILLAN FILE PHOTO
A few of those women are involved with the EEOC lawsuit, said James Bhandary-Alexander (pictured), a lawyer with New Haven Legal Association also representing them.
Gonzalez and Victorio said they have since found new employment. Meanwhile, they said, their stories can help change the culture at the warehouse . “We don’t want someone to go through that again,” Victorio said.
