Thanks sleeplessCOP.
Here is the update on my case.Yesterday I had a half hour telephone interview by the EEOC.
The lady basically went thru some of the main items in my charge and got more details from me.I had mentioned the protected classes as race and sex. She said it could be national origin too since I am from another country. SO she marked that national origin category also. She asked why I thought it was racial and sex discrimination when I did not get a raise and a bonus. I explained to her that all the others in my team are Caucasian females and my boss likes them. I told her that he treats me differently than them.
Then she asked if all of the department/company workers got raise this year.I said as far I know everyone did. In my team at least I know everyone got the company wide raise of at least 3%. She asked about the bonus. Asked what was the condition to get the bonus - like sales goals,profits, etc. I told her that rules for bonus is very generic and broad based. Nothing is clearly defined in the company policy. Every 6 months the manager gets to "nominate" someone for this bonus and they get it. Then she said it is highly subjective then. I said yes and he prefers my female co-workers for this. It is a huge amount since it is 15% one's annual pay.I said so far 3 times he did not nominate me and every time he gave it to his favored workers. She then asked for the month and names of those women who got it.
As a side note on this:
When they introduced this bonus program everyone in my company thought it will be abused since there was no rules to prevent favoritism. Exactly thats what is happening and managers are using it as a carrot to keep their pets happy. Whenever I asked who got it, he told "I can't say that.That is confidential..". So my boss thought he could play this game and screw me each time. He even sent me an email saying that it was "strictly on merit" but never said what merit meant.Officially HR says that they can't reveal who gets it each time since it is related to salary and that information is confidential.I think this is just BS. So its like my boss feels that he has the perfect cover to continue discriminating against me and get away with it.Almost like a perfect crime.
She was kinda interested on more details when I told her that I worked there as a contractor for nearly 1.5 hours and no problems on performance was mentioned.In fact I was hired as a full-time employee since I was so good.Then once became FTE everything started going bad according to my boss. She asked if I worked for the same boss and which company I worked for at that time.
Then she asked about the retaliation letter I sent and I gave her the details. She was surprised that I had no work allocated for next year when other have.Told me that if this retaliation continues that I should her directly and they will take care of things.
Finally she said she will type up the formal charge and mail it to me in the next few days for me sign and send it back.Once that happens, they will send the charge to the company and ask if they want to participate in mediation.She said I have to be very patient since this process may take 6+ months from now.But said she highly recommends it since it is very effective.
There some things we did not get to discuss since she asked me specific questions. Some of them are me not getting a promotion (related to my performance issue which is in the formal charge),my English communication skills, etc. They were mentioned in the documents I submitted to them. But I guess thats ok since all these can be brought up in the mediation right?
Let us see how it goes from here.
