Former Winder Krystal employees file complaint over strip searches

WINDER - Four former employees of a Barrow County Krystal restaurant who are black said they were unfairly strip searched by white managers and that three employees were fired after they complained.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed a lawsuit on behalf of the employees in U.S. District Court in Atlanta. In its complaint, the EEOC alleges that the managers searched the employees when $100 went missing from a white employee's cash register at the Krystal in Winder in June 2005. The lawsuit asks that the four employees be paid back wages plus interest.

``Our main goal is to change the behavior of employers,'' Vincent Hill, the EEOC attorney handling the Krystal case told the Athens Banner-Herald. ``We don't want any other employee subjected to this kind of treatment.''

Herbert Hunter, Daphne Hill and Shannon Jackson were fired after they complained that only the black employees were strip searched. Quinthony Brown did not return to work after he was searched.

According to the EEOC, a white cashier left work on June 29, 2005, without asking a manager to count the money in her register. The register later came up $100 short. Two white managers immediately questioned three black employees and forced them to undress to prove they were not hiding the money.

The cashier was never questioned about the missing money, the EEOC said.

Hill and Jackson were fired after complaining that they were singled out for the search because they are black and Hunter was fired because he told his managers their actions were discriminatory, according to the EEOC.

The employees originally complained to the EEOC two months after the initial incident, and the agency has been working to negotiate a settlement with New Capital Dimensions, the Milledgeville-based company that formerly owned the franchise.

Richard and Betty Bertoli of Milledgeville are listed as the corporation's registered agents with the Georgia Secretary of State's Office. A woman who answered the telephone Saturday at Richard Bertoli's home in Milledgeville said, ``I don't know anything about that,'' when asked for a comment on the case and then hung up the telephone.

http://accesswdun.com/article/2008/2/206474