Panda Express will pay $150,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of at least three female employees.

A male kitchen supervisor allegedly groped and insulted the women, who were then ages 17 and 19, at the Panda Express restaurant in Kapaa, Kauai.

Panda Restaurant Group Inc., the restaurant’s parent company, terminated the supervisor, but Thien Ho, senior manager of corporate relations, declined to comment on the reasons.

EEOC Senior Trial Attorney Amrita Mallik said the supervisor was fired before the suit was filed in September.

“In today’s settlement with the EEOC, we reconfirm our shared mission with the EEOC to ensure that our associates continue to be protected and cared for,” Ho said by email. “We appreciate the partnership of all those involved in this isolated incident to find resolution and dignity and common value in mind.”

According to the EEOC complaint, the unnamed supervisor repeatedly made inappropriate comments, asking the women to hold his penis or take off their shirts so he could see their breasts.

He also slapped female employees on their buttocks, rubbed against a female employee’s breasts and rubbed his crotch against them from behind, according to the suit against Panda Express Inc. and Panda Restaurant Group Inc.

The supervisor also thrust a broom handle between a female employee’s legs in a sexually suggestive manner, the suit alleges.

Affected employees repeatedly complained, but the general manager and multi-unit manager on Oahu failed to take action, the EEOC says.

Instead, management retaliated against at least one employee, Shaleah Rodero-Workman, who was 17 when the alleged harassment began in 2008.

The harassment occurred daily for about six months and included sexual advances, demands for sexual favors and graphic sexual comments, she said.

“It made me really uncomfortable,” she was quoted as saying in an EEOC news release.

When Rodero-Workman complained, her work schedule was reduced to three days from six to seven, says the EEOC. She ultimatedly resigned and contacted the federal agency at the urging of her aunt.

As part of the settlement, announced Wednesday, Panda Express entered into a two-year consent decree requiring the company to designate an in-house equal employment opportunity coordinator, revise and distribute its anti-harassment policy and procedures and provide annual sexual harassment training to all of their employees in Kapaa and general managers in the state.

Rodero-Workman, 22, said she wants other sexual harassment victims to know that help is available.
“Don’t have any fear coming forward,” she advised. “There’s always somebody there to help you.”
Mallik commended Rodero-Workman for blowing the whistle.

“She’s an extremely brave and resourceful, young woman,” she said, adding that she hopes more young women will understand that employers have a duty to protect them.

In a news release, Timothy Riera, director of the EEOC’s Honolulu office, encouraged employers to conduct employee training on policies and procedures relating to sexual harassment.

“Those who exercise their right to report sexual harassment and discrimination at work are also protected from illegal retaliation,” he said. “The EEOC is certainly here to help, especially when employers fail to meet their legal obligations to protect our youngest workers.”