A manager at a Bourbonnais hotel stalked and sexually harassed black housekeepers and coerced them into sex, a pair of federal lawsuits allege.
But lawyers for the women don’t just want the manager and the franchisee who runs the Fairfield Inn by Marriott held accountable. Citing a recent landmark ruling by the National Labor Relations Board, they say Marriott should pay up too.
Former housekeepers Tashima Little and Shernica Johnson both say they were fired after they stood up to the unnamed manager’s ongoing sexual abuse. Lawsuits they filed in Urbana on Friday say that franchisee TMI Hospitality and Marriott were their “joint employers.”
It’s an early test of the NLRB’s August ruling in an otherwise unrelated California case that upset business groups by redefining what it means to be a joint employer. A company was previously considered a joint employer if it had direct and immediate control over working conditions, but the NLRB said it also is a joint employer if it exercises indirect control over working conditions or if it reserves the authority to do so.
Little and Johnson’s attorney, Carmen Caruso, argues that Marriott meets that standard because it “exercises direct, indirect or potential control over essential working conditions at this hotel.” The lawsuits allege that both women were stalked around the hotel as they worked, then locked in hotel rooms and coerced into sex by the manager multiple times.
The manager’s name was withheld from the complaint “due to the extremely scandalous nature of the conduct he has engaged in, as the mere filing of a public complaint could be expected to ruin his reputation,” the suits state.
Johnson was coerced into sex at least seven times, while Little was targeted more than 100 times between 2013 and 2015, the suits allege. Both women felt they had no choice but to “submit to involuntary sexual servitude” because they were parents who were “in no financial position” to lose their jobs, the suits state. And both were fired when they refused to continue to submit, according to the suits, which also allege racial discrimination.
Marriott and TMI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit Tuesday.
Experts say the NLRB ruling in the underlying California case will be appealed and could reach the Supreme Court. Franchise model businesses, including companies like McDonald’s in the fast-food industry, are closely watching that case to see if they will be held liable for labor law violations by franchisees or be forced to the bargaining table by unions seeking to organize franchisee employees.
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