Jones v. Trane U.S., Inc.

BETTY JONES v. TRANE US, INC.

NO. 3:19-0453

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT MIDDLE DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE NASHVILLE DIVISION

August 28, 2020

TO: Honorable William L. Campbell, Jr., District Judge

REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION

By Order entered June 5, 2019 (Docket Entry No. 6), this pro se case was referred to the Magistrate Judge for pretrial proceedings under 28 U.S.C. §§ 636(b)(1)(A) and (B), Rule 72(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and the Local Rules of Court.

Presently pending before the Court is Defendant's motion for summary judgment (Docket Entry No. 31), to which Plaintiff has responded in opposition. For the reasons set out below, the undersigned respectfully recommends that the motion be granted in part and denied in part.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

Betty Jones ("Plaintiff") filed this pro se lawsuit on May 29, 2019, after being terminated in March 2017 from her job as a management employee for Trane US, Inc. ("Trane") at Trane's manufacturing plant ("the Plant") in Clarksville, Tennessee. (Docket Entry No. 1.) Plaintiff subsequently clarified her allegations and her specific legal claims in an amended complaint. (Docket Entry No. 14.) Plaintiff alleges that she suffered employment discrimination on account of her age and sex, that she was given unequal pay as compared to a male employee, and that she was retaliated against for making an internal complaint of employment discrimination.¹ Upon Defendant's filingof its answer and amended answer, see Docket Entry Nos. 8 and 16, scheduling orders were entered providing the parties with a period of time for pretrial activity and discovery in the case. (Docket Entry Nos. 9, 25, and 30.) Defendant's motion for summary judgment is the only pending motion in the case, and a trial date has not yet been scheduled. Neither party has made a demand for a jury trial.²

Plaintiff was 58 years old at the time she began working at the Plant in March 2014 as a Senior HR Generalist with a starting annual salary of $70,000.00. As a Senior HR Generalist, Plaintiff's work included a variety of duties related to personnel and labor management at the Plant for both salaried and hourly employees at the Plant, which employs approximately 1,400 employees. The HR Department at the Plant is not a large department and, during the relevant time period, it consisted of the following full time employees: HR Manager John Carl ("Carl") (age 61), HR Manager (on special assignment) Tiya Mukherjee ("Mukherjee") (age 32); Plaintiff; HR Generalist Vincent Kelly ("Kelly") (age 31); HR Administrator Liz Pritts ("Pritts") (age 38). See Defendant's Statement of Undisputed Facts (Docket Entry No. 33) at 22, ¶ 98.³ Aenis Harris ("Harris"), who was, at the time, the HR Director, Integrated Supply Chain, and Paula Nuzzi ("Nuzzi"), an HR Manager from a facility in Indiana, also worked at the Plant during the spring and early summer of 2016, overseeing the HR Department on an interim basis until Carl, who was replacing the prior HR Manager at the Plant, could transfer to the Plant from a Trane facility in Lexington, Kentucky. Id. at 4, ¶ 17.

Plaintiff alleges that she worked without issue at the Plant until June 2016 when Carl took over the position of HR Manager at the Plant and became Plaintiff's direct supervisor. She contends that Carl assigned to her tasks that had not been previously assigned to her by the prior HR Manager,Josh Miller ("Miller"), and that these tasks substantially increased her workload. The tasks included performing New Hire Orientations for new hourly employees, tracking "Manpower" hours for hundreds of employees, performing increased administrative support and duties, providing increased employee support, and increasing the length of responses to employee grievances. Plaintiff asserts that many of these tasks had previously been performed by HR Generalists and administrative staff and that the three younger employees in the HR Department were not assigned the volume of tasks that Carl assigned to her. She also contends that Carl directed that she move her desk from the back of the HR Department, where she had privacy to discuss matters with employees, to the front section of the HR Department, which was much busier and where she was responsible for providing assistance to a high volume of employees who came into the department on a daily basis with a variety of questions. She asserts that she was the only HR employee that was directed to move their desk.

On October 13, 2016, Carl and Harris met with Plaintiff to discuss her work and issued to her an "Expectations" document which outlined five specific expectations for Plaintiff:

* Establish credibility with front line supervisors by issuing [a] proper level of discipline in a timely manner

* Establish proper behavior of employees by raising level of expectations and accountability

* Conduct employee discipline/counseling sessions efficiently and effectively

* Perform all aspects of labor relations efficiently and effectively

* Perform all aspects of employee investigations and provide appropriate responses

(Docket Entry No. 34-1 at 44.) Both Plaintiff and Carl signed the document. (Id.) The parties differ as to the genesis of the meeting. Plaintiff contends that the meeting occurred only after she spoke to Carl about what she perceived as an increased workload and Carl's expectation of her and after she relayed to Carl a comment that she had heard from a retiring hourly employee that Carl was going to "work her so hard that she would quit." Defendant intimates that the meeting occurred so that Carl and Harris could discuss their observations of Plaintiff's performance and her performance issues, make clear their expectations, and encourage her to improve.

On February 13, 2017, Carl again met with Plaintiff, this time to go over her performance evaluation for 2016. Mukherjee was also at the meeting. A written 2016 Performance and Core Competency Review was generated prior to the meeting that included statements from Plaintiff, Carl, and Harris with respect to several work objectives and whether Plaintiff met these objectives. The review form also included a scored Overall Objective Rating of "2.0 - Meets Most" for the achievement of performance objectives and an Overall Competency and Value Rating of 3.0 - Expected Proficiency." (Docket Entry No. 38-2 at 9-16.)⁴ As part of her evaluation, Plaintiff asserts that she was to receive an annual pay raise of 1.75%. (Amended Complaint at 8, ¶ 9.)

Two days later, on February 15, 2017, Plaintiff lodged an internal complaint ("the February 2017 Complaint") against Carl with Defendant's ethics help line. She complained about Carl's treatment of her, her year end evaluation, and her pay raise, and she alleged racial, sex, and age discrimination, as well as unequal pay in comparison to her male co-worker, HR Generalist Kelly. (Docket Entry No. 34-1 at 54-57.) After Defendant conducted an investigation into the complaint, including interviews with both Plaintiff and Carl, Defendant informed Plaintiff by e-mail on March 8, 2017, that it found no support for her allegations that she had been treated unfairly or discriminated against because of her gender or race. (Id. at 54.) Plaintiff alleges that subsequent to her filing of the February 2017 Complaint, Carl did not make any attempts to address the concerns that she had raised and he began to ostracize her by not communicating with her.

On March 17, 2017, Carl and Mukherjee met with Plaintiff and informed her that she was being terminated from her job. Plaintiff asserts that she was told by Carl that she did not have enough labor experience and she was offered a separation/severance agreement, which she declined to accept. (Amended Complaint at 11, ¶ 14; Docket Entry No. 48 at 33.) Plaintiff then filed an internal complaint about wrongful termination and retaliation, which Defendant found was not supported by facts. (Docket Entry No. 34-1 at 53-54.) Plaintiff thereafter filed a charge ofdiscrimination and received a right to sue letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on April 10, 2019. See Complaint at Exhibit 1 (Docket Entry No. 1-1).

Plaintiff asserts that she has been unable to find employment in the human resources field as a result of being terminated from her job with Trane. In her lawsuit she seeks various forms of damages and injunctive relief based upon four claims:

(1) a claim of disparate treatment on account of age brought under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 621 et seq. ("ADEA") based upon her allegations of the extra work duties assigned to her by Carl, see Amended Complaint at 3-5;

(2) a claim of unequal pay brought under the Equal Pay Act, 29 U.S.C. § 206(d) ("EPA") based on the disparity in pay between Plaintiff and a male co-worker, Vincent Kelly, id. at 6;

(3) a claim of disparate treatment and unequal pay on account of sex brought under 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e et seq. ("Title VII") based on her allegations that she was given an unequal workload and was not provided with equal pay as compared to a male co-worker, Vincent Kelly., id. at 6-7; and

(4) a claim brought under Title VII for retaliation based on her allegations that she was terminated in retaliation for making the February 2017 Complaint. Id. at 7.

II. MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT AND RESPONSE

Defendant seeks summary judgment under Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In support of its motion, Defendant relies on a statement of undisputed material facts (Docket Entry No. 33), a memorandum of law (Docket Entry No. 32), and the following evidentiary materials: 1) excerpts from Plaintiff's deposition transcript (Docket Entry No. 34-1); 2) the declaration of Aenis Harris (Docket Entry No. 38-1); 3) the declaration of John Carl and documents attached thereto (Docket Entry No. 38-2); and, 4) the declaration Michael Creamer, Trane's Human Resources Leader - Integrated Supply Chain (Docket Entry No. 34-4).

Defendant contends that Pl...