People buy bottled water at a supermarket in Lanzhou, Gansu province, April 11, 2014. Residents in the Chinese city of Lanzhou rushed to buy bottled drinks on Friday after authorities said benzene, a cancer-inducing chemical, had been found in tap water a
People buy bottled water at a supermarket in Lanzhou, Gansu province, April 11, 2014. Residents in the Chinese city of Lanzhou rushed to buy bottled drinks on Friday after authorities said benzene, a cancer-inducing chemical, had been found in tap water at 20 times above national safety levels. The water supply was turned off in one district, and officials warned citizens not to drink tap water for the next 24 hours. Picture taken April 11, 2014. Reuters/Stringer

Nestlé Waters North America is facing a gender discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Tampa division in late September, the lawsuit claims the Connecticut-based Nestlé Waters violated federal anti-discrimination law by refusing to promote a qualified female employee and then laying her off later.

The EEOC petition asserted that the company’s action stemmed from prejudice against the gender of the female employee, Dawn Bowers-Ferrera.

The lawsuit alleged that even though Bowers-Ferrera had more than 20 years of experience with Nestlé Waters, she was sidelined for promotion in order to favour a less qualified male employee.

The lawsuit also highlighted that Bowers-Ferrera was the only sales zone manager of the company laid off during a consolidation of zone sales in the state of Florida, while 11 other zone managers, all men, were retained by the company. The EEOC said, it tried to settle the case out of court but that was not successful.

Seeks compensation

The law suit seeks “back pay, front pay and/or reinstatement, compensatory damages, punitive damages and injunctive relief” for Bowers-Ferrera.

“The law of this nation does not allow for a woman who does her job well and gives almost two decades of her life to her employer to be held back by gender bias,” Robert Weisberg, regional attorney for EEOC said in a statement.

Besides the current lawsuit, Nestlé Waters faced a few more staff-related legal problems this year. In August, a former employee named Andrea Annette Jackson filed a lawsuit against the company claiming she was fired after telling her boss she was pregnant. Jackson said she was told to possibly reapply for her job after her deilivery.

“Nestle’s discrimination was done with malice and/or with reckless disregard for plaintiff’s federally protected rights … an award of exemplary damages is therefore warranted,” her lawsuit argued.

However, the company did not make any comment despite calls and emails from the media.

Protest against water plant

Meanwhile, Nestlé’s water business has been made an election issue in a U.S county, where the company is under fire for setting up a bottling plant in a drought affected area. There is anguish about water companies trying to sell precious resources when most of the U.S. is languishing in drought.

Opponents of a Nestlé water bottling plant proposed for the Oregon town of Cascade Locks filed a local ballot measure to prohibit any bottled water exports from the county. The group said it is the first nationwide measure to prevent local water rights from being sold to a corporation, and set a precedent for other communities, the Statesman Journal reported.

Ed del Val, president of the Local Water Alliance PAC noted that Hood River County, where Cascade Locks is located has been declared drought affected by the state government.

“When your county is facing record drought conditions, the idea of sending millions of gallons of water a year out of the county in mountains of plastic piled on the back of trucks seems particularly irresponsible,” del Val said.

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