Local Law Firms Home > Workers' Compensation News > BP Agrees for $5.4M Workers Compensation Settlement The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced that BP has agreed to a $5.4 million workers’ compensation settlement for alleged gender bias in its hiring practices for its cleanup operations following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. BP spent billions of dollars on cleanup across all the Gulf coast states, including Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. The compensation will be provided to a class of qualified female applicants from these states that sought employment with BP contractors, but were refused because they were women. Applicants will have to provide documentation supporting their application claims. The settlement is a voluntary agreement, and makes no determination that BP violated anti-discrimination laws. BP for its part denies that it has engaged in any wrongdoing in this matter. But the company has agreed to ramp up contractual safeguards requiring contractors to abide by EEO laws. BP will be providing training for administrators who deal with the contractors, and BP employees will be monitoring compliance of all the terms of this settlement agreement with the EEOC. The $5.4 million fund will cover payment claims made by women who claim gender bias in their rejection, and the remaining balance in the fund will be donated to a Gulf coast charity that benefits women in the workplace. As a part of the settlement, BP has also agreed to partner with others and share lessons it learned that might help companies maintain equal opportunity hiring practices even under extreme and critical circumstances, such as the Deepwater oil spill cleanup operation. Mike Utsler, president of BP’s Gulf Coast Restoration Organization, warned BP contractors that deviance from BP's core values of workplace equality will not be tolerated. Keith T. Hill, the EEOC’s New Orleans Field Office director, added that it was the EEOC's mission to make sure that civil rights and workplace discrimination laws were not violated even in an emergency situation.
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