Commissioned sales worker accuses Home Depot At-Home Services of racial discrimination

A commissioned employee with Home Depot At-Home Services Inc. has filed a federal complaint against the business alleging that she was regularly denied potential lucrative job opportunities and subsequently terminated for unlawful reasons due to her race.

Philadelphia resident Glenn Hamilton, who began her employment as a sales consultant for the defendant this past February, working on a commission basis to sell roofing, doors, siding and windows to Home Depot customers and contractors, claims she was denied opportunities to gain appointments and work for additional Home Depot stores all because she is black.

The complaint lists a number of white employees who received certain types of training for which the plaintiff was denied because of her race.

This included training on windows, roofing, siding and doors.

When one of the other workers quit his job, the suit states, Hamilton requested the man’s store, which is in Ridley Park, Delaware County, because the sales coming out of the plaintiff’s South Philadelphia store were small due to lower valued homes in the area.

Hamilton was denied the request for the other store, with officials instead assigning it to a white employee who worked with another store that was already recognized as being highly successful in the sales arena.

Hamilton complained to a human resource representative and her manager that the housing value and income of the area to which she had been assigned was lower than any of the other areas around the nine other stores to which white workers had been assigned, according to the complaint.

The plaintiff further complained that other white salespeople were having leads generated for them, while she was not.

After registering her complaints with company officials, Hamilton was improperly accused of tendering her resignation, the lawsuit states.

Hamilton, who denied ever resigning from her job, was then unlawfully terminated in early May of this year, after less than three months on the job.

The plaintiff accuses the defendants of violating her civil rights by treating her in a disparate manner on account of her race.

The plaintiff seeks to have the defendant permanently enjoined from discriminating against employees on any basis forbidden under the national Civil Rights Act.

Hamilton also seeks back pay, front pay, benefits, actual damages, punitive damages, costs and attorney’s fees.

The lawsuit was filed on Dec. 2 at the federal courthouse in Philadelphia by Penndel, Pa. attorney Timothy M. Kolman of Kolman Ely P.C.

 

The federal case number is 2:13-cv-06983-CMR.