Baldor Electric Agrees on Settlement

The Baldor Electric Company has recently offered to make a settlement earlier on the week. The settlement is worth $2 million and is being made by the company as a way of settling allegations that were made against them by the United State Labor Department. The Labor Department made allegations that the company was discriminating when it came down to who they hired. The company claims that while they are willing to pay $2 million to settle the allegation, they do not feel as though they have been discriminatory or bias when it comes to whom they have hired.

However, the Labor Department disagrees completely and has made allegations that hundreds of women and minorities were prevented from being able to get jobs with the company because of the screening process that Baldor has for all of the potential employees who happen to fill out an application. With the settlement in place, a total of 795 of those individuals who applied and were screened out based on their gender or race will receive payment. The company has also stated that it will hire some of the individuals who originally applied but did not get accepted once there are positions available for them. If the money from the settlement is divided evenly between each individual, each person will receive about $2500. While the company has made it clear that they feel there was no wrongdoing that occurred, they felt as though it would be much easier to simply come up with a settlement instead of having to fight against the Labor Department and the allegations that were made.

A spokesperson for Baldor, Tracy Long, said that if the company chose to fight the allegations made against them from the Labor Department, they would be dealing with an extremely lengthy process which could have ended up costing them a whole lot more in the long run. Long continued her statement by saying the company does not admit to doing anything wrong when it comes to the screening process of applicants and that the company simply chose to settle because it would have been far more expensive to continue the fight with the Labor Department. This is an issue that has going on for more than half a decade, dating back to 2006 when the Labor Department first started questioning Baldor’s screening process practices. Long says that the screening process for the Baldor Electric Company does, in fact, comply with all of the rules that have been set from the Department of Labor. Long says that the company has and always will continue to comply with rules that have been set, pointing out that the company has done the right thing from the very start.