Another NJ Transit employee files a sexual harassment suit against the agency
An NJ Transit rail conductor has accused an engineer of sexually harassing and assaulting her at work, in the latest lawsuit to allege that the agency fosters a hostile work environment where harassment is allowed to take place.
The woman, who is not being named because of the sexual nature of the allegations, is a 15-year employee at NJ Transit and became a conductor in 2019. She alleges in the lawsuit — which was filed this month in state court in Essex County and names NJ Transit as the sole defendant — that the sexual misconduct began in 2022.
In the presence of co-workers, the engineer she accuses of harassing her "would constantly tell anyone present that [she] was interested in him romantically," even though she told him repeatedly that she didn't like his comments and started avoiding him at work, according to the lawsuit.
On April 26, 2022, the engineer allegedly sexually assaulted her in front of another conductor, "grabbing her and hugging her, putting his body next to hers and forcibly kissing her face and neck,” the lawsuit said.
When she told him to stop hugging, he chased her on the train and platform as she struggled to get away, according to the lawsuit.
During and after her shift that day, she reported the engineer's behavior to her union representative, two train masters and an assistant superintendent and filed a formal written complaint, the lawsuit said. Two days after the alleged assault, she was diagnosed with PTSD and went on leave.
They 'use the system against you'
The agency's Equal Employment Opportunity office scheduled a hearing regarding the formal complaint she filed for May 9, 2022, but it was withdrawn for unknown reasons, the lawsuit said. In a follow-up interview with the EEO investigator, she was informed that the man she accused of harassing her had filed a complaint against her, according to the lawsuit. She was also displaced from her job assignment, the lawsuit said.
"You make a complaint as a female, what they do is use the system against you, they use it to gather information and they have no intention of doing the right thing, and ultimately it becomes a punitive matter," said Jim Burden, a lawyer with the firm McClure Burden who is representing the woman in this case.
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"If a male employee in the workplace grabbed a female and hugged her and kissed her against her will in the middle of a workday, that person would probably see the door that afternoon, but not at NJ Transit," Burden said.
The woman's harasser, she said in the lawsuit, "remained and continues to remain in the workplace, has continued to get paid and suffered no meaningful penalty for his egregious sexual assault and sexual harassment,” while “NJT fostered a sexually harassing atmosphere and allowed actions which constitute sexual harassment" in violation of the state Law Against Discrimination.
NJ Transit spokesman Jim Smith declined to comment on the case because the litigation is pending.
Sexual harassment suits filed by more than a dozen against NJ Transit
Last month, an NJ Transit bus cleaner filed a lawsuit that said she dealt with a "graphically sexual" work environment at the Orange bus garage. She accused multiple male co-workers of sexually harassing her with little or no punishment, despite reporting the behaviors to superiors, EEO and the police department.
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Since 2021, more than a dozen current and former NJ Transit employees in the rail, bus and police departments have filed lawsuits accusing the agency of failing to protect them from sexual harassment and sexual assault and failing to enforce its own rules prohibiting hostile work behavior. Several employees have recently settled with the agency over accusations of a hostile work environment and retribution for reporting that behavior.
"It’s very frustrating as a plaintiff’s attorney to litigate cases against the state," Burden said. "They shouldn’t be fighting us on these cases, they should be taking action to get bad apples out of the workplace and getting the workplace cleaned up so people can go to work and not deal with this nonsense."
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ Transit employee files sexual harassment suit
