Have you ever been discriminated against for your age? One former manager at Mondelez International was, and filed a lawsuit as a result. Fortunately for her, that lawsuit recently settled for $200,000. Joan Konsavage, a long-time employee of Mondelez International, first began getting hints from her supervisor that she should “step aside and let younger employees shine” back during the summer of 2013. Shortly before the comments began, the company, a “multibillion-dollar snack-food giant...split off from Kraft Foods and was building a new team at its Wilkes-Barre distribution center.” However, Konsavage, who was 50-years-old at the time, had no plans of retiring any time some and was not a fan of her boss's suggestions. In addition, she had a growing list of other concerns that began around the same time.According to a lawsuit that Konsavage filed against Mondelez International, “she was told not to speak in weekly staff meetings.” On top of that, her lawsuit claimed an “area of the warehouse came to be called 'Deadwood' because of the older employees working there,” and during her deposition she was allegedly told, “you have no potential at your age. You lack learning ability. You lack agility. You have been here too long.”Upset by the comments, she took her complaints to the company's “top management in Wilkes-Barre in August 2013.” Unfortunately for her, her efforts didn't help and she was demoted and her pay was cut, according to the lawsuit. Then, to make matter worse, later in the year the company's human resource department launched an investigation into “whether she improperly influenced a management survey so that she received good reviews, and then lied about that in an interview with HR, a violation of company policy and the reason for firing her,” or so Mondelez International claimed.

Courthouse Building; image courtesy of Claire Anderson via Unsplash, https://unsplash.com

Konsavage pushed back against her company's allegations about the management survey and denied any wrongdoing. In June 2015, she filed a "discrimination and retaliation lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania” as a result of the treatment she endured while employed with Mondelez International. Earlier this month, a Scranton jury ruled in Konsavage's favor, “agreeing that she was fired in retaliation for complaining about age discrimination.” She was awarded $200,000 in compensatory damages, though wasn't awarded any lost wages.Nonetheless, Konsavage reportedly felt “relieved to be vindicated.” Her lawyer, Christine E. Burke chimed in saying “it was the only place she ever worked, and she felt like she was clearing her name” with the jury's verdict. Burke added that her client “was truly the little guy against this big company.”How did Mondelez respond to the settlement announcement? For starters, the company's lawyer, Leslie Miller Greenspan, issued the following statement:“While we disagree with the verdict, we accept the jury’s findings as the final step in this protracted litigation. In the end, the jury rejected seven out of eight claims by the plaintiff and awarded her less than one-fourth of her pretrial demand and less than we offered to resolve the case a year ago to avoid the trial.”

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Woman, 57, awarded $200K in Mondelez age-retaliation caseWoman alleges snack food firm practiced age discrimination, retaliation