Three women at the center of the feds’ pregnancy-bias suit against Bloomberg LP took aim at Mayor Bloomberg yesterday, accusing him of secretly wielding power at his old company and helping condone a culture of sexual discrimination.
“This systemic, top-down discrimination against female employees is fostered, condoned and perpetuated by the highest levels of management within Bloomberg and by the ownership of Bloomberg, to wit, Michael Bloomberg,” the lawsuit alleges.
The new charges came as Tanys Lancaster, Jill Patricot and Janet Loures joined a lawsuit filed by the feds last week – seeking a stunning $480 million.
The mayor, who still owns 68 percent of the worldwide financial-information company, has repeatedly insisted he stopped calling the shots at the company when he stepped down as CEO in 2001.
But lawyers for the women, who do not name the mayor as a defendant, claim this is “open to question.”
“Despite public proclamations and assurances from Michael Bloomberg that . . . he has divested himself from the day-to-day operations of Bloomberg, upon information and belief [he] has in fact stayed involved with the management and monitoring of [the] business,” the complaint states.
The complaint claims the mayor and Bloomberg LP Chairman Lex Fenwick continue to communicate about discrimination complaints by company employees and how the human-resources department responds, court papers charge.
Fenwick is also accused of telling another executive to fire two pregnant executives, saying, “I’m not having any pregnant bitches working for me.”
At a company meeting on Sept. 13, a senior business manager allegedly told employees that while the mayor “does not actively work at Bloomberg, he still looks at the ‘People Product’ all the time and has a very strong opinion regarding [it].”
“Mike calls Lex all the time about the ‘People Product.’ He probably shouldn’t, but he does,” the manager allegedly told approximately 20 employees, including Loures, at the meeting that took place at the company’s Princeton, N.J., offices.
In August 2006, the mayor allegedly instructed Bloomberg Radio “it was not permitted to run advertisements for law firms specializing in prosecuting employment-discrimination cases.”
In the wake of the bombshell lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last week, the mayor told reporters, “I haven’t worked there, as you know, in an awful long time.”
Yesterday, the mayor referred calls to Bloomberg LP.
Dismissing the complaint as a “publicity stunt,” the company issued a statement saying, “It sounds like an effort to damage reputations and stir up publicity to pressure the company for financial gain.”
“When Mike Bloomberg was here, he pioneered at this company some of the best benefit programs around for all employees, especially families and women,” the statement said.
“Now that he has been gone for several years and his name is well known, it is being used to manipulate the EEOC case,” the statement continued.
The EEOC claims that women across all levels of the company were demoted to lower-paying jobs, received negative reviews and were stripped of responsibilities when they became pregnant and returned from maternity leave.
The three women on whose behalf the feds are suing, all longtime executives who became pregnant after Bloomberg took public office, claim the company retaliated against them when they complained about discrimination.
The complaint notes that Bloomberg has been “sued in the past,” detailing an earlier complaint by a former top sales representative who claimed he “told her twice to ‘kill it’ when she informed him that she was pregnant” in 1995.
Bloomberg later left “an apology message” on the woman’s voice mail and that case was settled for an undisclosed but substantial amount of money, court papers claim.
Patricot, 35, Lancaster, 38, and Loures, 41, are each seeking more than $160 million.