ÿortlani» (Observer luly 20. 2011 Page 9 L aw &J ustice Meyer Equal Opportunity Commission takes action Last week the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Com ­ mission sued the grocery chain Fred Meyer for failing to stop a regular customer from harass­ ing female employees. According to the EEOC’s law­ suit, female employees at Fred M eyer’s Oak Grove store in Milwaukie, Ore., were sexually harassed by a custom er who visited the store almost daily, sometimes several times a day, since at least 2007. Despite numerous complaints by the staff, the EEOC, which enforces federal laws prohibit­ ing employment discrimination, said Fred Meyer managers ex­ cused the custom er’s offensive behavior as “hearsay,” even Fred Meyer management is accused o f failing to stop a customer from harassing female employees at the Oak Grove store in Milwaukie. though the women gave first­ hand accounts of their experi­ ences. “Fred M eyer’s failure to ad­ dress the continued harassment of its e m p lo y e e s is inexcus->able,” said EEOC San Francisco District Director Mike Baldonado. “This store received complaints almost on a daily ba­ sis about a regular customer re­ peatedly touching and groping its female employees. According to the EEOC, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits sexual harassment and requires employers to take prompt action to investigate and to stop the behavior after they receive complaints. Laura Morrow, a Fred Meyer employee since 2002 and one of the women who brought the case to EEOC’s attention, said, “I just want to see to it that this doesn’t happen to anyone else. Fred Meyer shouldn’ t have let this hap­ pen to any of us in the first place. I reported this problem time and time again and they didn’t do any­ thing to protect me.” The law protects against ha­ rassment in the workplace, not only from supervisors and co­ workers, but also from non-em­ ployees such as customers, ven­ dors, contractors and even de­ livery persons. The commission explained they are filing the law suit against Fred Meyer because employers are required by law to report and investigate to take appropriate action or must face legal consequences. “The customer is not always right,” said EEOC Regional At­ torney W illiam R. Tamayo. Further information about the EEOC is available on its web site at www.eeoc.gov. Minorities Make Up Majority Census data confims changing social order (AP) - For the first tim e, m inorities make up a m ajority o f babies in the U .S., part o f a sw eeping race change and a grow ing age divide betw een m ostly white, older A m ericans and predom inantly m inority youths that could reshape gov­ ernm ent policies. Prelim inary 2010 census es­ tim ates also show the share of A frican-A m erican households headed by w om en - m ostly single m others - now exceeds A frican-A m erican households with m arried couples, a sign of declining U.S. m arriages over­ all but also o f continuing ch al­ lenges for black youths w ith­ out involved fathers. D em ographers say the num ­ bers provide the clearest con­ firm ation yet o f a changing social order, one in w hich ra­ cial and ethnic m inorities will becom e the U.S. m ajority by m idcentury. C u rre n tly , n o n -H is p a n ic whites make up ju st under half o f all children 3 years old, w hereas in 1990, more than 60 percent o f children in that age group were white, according to the 2009 annual census sur­ vey. The prelim inary figures are based on an analysis o f the C urrent Population Survey as well as the 2009 A m erican C o m m u n ity S u rv ey , w hich sam pled 3 m illion U.S. house­ holds to determ ine that w hites made up 51 percent o f babies younger than 2. A fter taking into account a. larger-than-ex- pected jum p in the m inority child population in the 2010 census, the share of white ba­ bies falls below 50 percent. T w elve states and the D is­ trict of C olum bia now have w hite populations below 50 percent am ong children under age 5 - Hawaii, California, New ‘ M exico, Texas, A rizona, N e­ vada, Florida, M aryland, G eor­ gia, New Jersey, New York and M ississippi. That's up from six states and the D istrict of Colum bia in 2000. At current growth rates, seven more states could flip to "minor­ ity-majority" status among small children in the next decade: Illi­ nois, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, South Carolina and Delaware. By contrast, whites make up the vast majority of older Ameri­ cans - 80 percent of seniors 65 and older and roughly 73 percent o f people ages 45-64. Many states with high percentages of white seniors also have particu­ larly large shares of minority children, including Arizona, Ne­ vada, C alifornia, Texas and Florida. Kenneth Johnson, a sociology professor and senior demogra­ pher at the University of New Hampshire, noted that much of the race change is being driven by increases in younger His­ panic women having more chil­ dren than do white women, who have lower birth rates and as a group are moving beyond their prime childbearing years. Preston’s CORG, Inc. 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