A California-based moving company that boasts about its young, buff employees is being sued by the federal government for age discrimination.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against Meathead Movers for violating age-discrimination law by not hiring enough older staff, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Since launching in 1997, the Fresno-based company’s mission has been to rent student-athletes. Its social media posts show its youthful, muscled employees lifting weights and lifting boxes.
The staff, dubbed “Meatheads,” annually face off against one another within the Meathead Olympics, racing to assemble and leap over boxes.
During moves, staff are required to run from the moving truck to the house after they’re empty-handed, in accordance with the Journal.
The corporate states on its website that its “founding principle is to support athletes working in pursuit of their dream profession path and that may never change.“
Meathead Movers executives deny that they discriminate against older staff, claiming the job is solely too demanding for those not in tip-top shape.
“We’re 100% open to hiring anyone at any age in the event that they can do the job,” company owner Aaron Steed told the Journal. “People love working at Meathead, or they’re turned off by how hard it’s. You have got to maneuver furniture and run to get more.”
The EEOC, chaired by Charlotte Burrows, alleges that Meathead Movers’ marketing and hiring practices discourage older staff from applying, WSJ reported. Current employees are asked to hunt latest potential hires at local gyms and colleges, the agency claims.
The agency told the outlet that discouragement bias will be present in job ads, marketing materials and intrusive job application questions, like asking a few student’s class schedule.
EEOC has been looking into the corporate since 2017 by itself and didn’t stem from a grievance as most of its investigations are. Last yr, it received greater than 70,000 complaints and filed 91 employment discrimination lawsuits, in accordance with the newspaper.
The 2 sides tried to barter a settlement, with the agency demanding $15 million before lowering that to about $5 million, in accordance with internal emails reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.
Meathead countered with a $750,000 offer to settle. The EEOC filed the suit in September.
“We had no idea we were doing anything flawed by being a moving company that hires a whole lot of student-athletes,” Steed told WSJ.
“We wish to alter and evolve, but we are able to’t comply with exit of business doing it.”
Burrows was appointed chair of the EEOC by President Biden. Since Democrats took control of the agency in August, commissioners have since voted seven times on age discrimination matters. They voted on age issues just thrice this yr before that.
She has vowed to implement age-discrimination laws regarding age bias as nearly 1 / 4 of the country’s workforce is aged 55 and older, and the agency appears to be aggressively pursuing age-discrimination cases.
In line with the Labor Department, the variety of seniors over the age of 65 within the workforce will grow by a 3rd over the following 10 years.
The Post has reached out to the EEOC for comment on the lawsuit.
Advocates for older Americans lauded the agency taking up age discrimination.
“Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is over 50. I’m pretty sure he can be good at moving boxes,” Bill Alvarado Rivera, senior vice chairman for litigation at AARP, an association for the rights of older people, told the Journal.
“That type of stereotype about who may very well be a very good mover has no place in an economy that values individuals.”