Eunice company settles federal lawsuit

Louisiana Crane & Construction LLC of Eunice and the U.S. Department of Justice have reached a settlement of a lawsuit on its hiring procedures, a Justice Department news release stated.
The lawsuit alleged that from at least Jan. 1, 2013, until at least Sept. 1, 2013, Louisiana Crane required workers who are not U.S. citizens to produce documents issued by the Department of Homeland Security as a condition of employment, but it did not make similar demands of U.S. citizens.
The anti-discrimination provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act prohibits employers from placing additional documentary burdens on workers during the employment eligibility verification process based on the worker’s citizenship status.
Louisiana Crane agreed to pay $165,000 in civil penalties to the United States, establish a $50,000 back pay fund to compensate workers who lost wages because of the company’s practices, undergo monitoring for two years and train its employees on the INA’s anti-discrimination provision.
People who were authorized to work in the United States but were denied a job at Louisiana Crane, whose hire date was delayed by Louisiana Crane or were fired by Louisiana Crane between 2011 and 2015 because they could not show the documents the company requested to prove their work authorization, should contact Office of Special Counsel at 202-305-0144, the news release stated. Any unclaimed money from the $50,000 back pay fund will be donated to a non-profit organization in Texas or Louisiana.
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the Civil Rights Division, said, “We see far too many cases of employers creating discriminatory barriers for immigrants who have permission to work in the United States.”