4 Former Store Managers Sue Jewel-Osco for Age Discrimination

Four former Jewel-Osco store managers are suing the grocery chain for age discrimination after they were replaced by younger workers and either fired or placed on disability leave.

Timothy Cesario, 61, first filed a discrimination claim against the company in December of 2015, according to the text of the lawsuit. He had started working at a Jewel-Osco in Glen Ellyn in April of 1980 and hadn’t left the company since.

Within his 36-year career with the company, Cesario was promoted to the position of store manager. It wasn’t until the winter of 2014, he said, that the company started treating him poorly.

The district manager started visiting Cesario’s store at least once a week, the complaint states, placing him under “heightened and intense scrutiny.” He was allegedly scolded for small things and given huge tasks, like revamping his whole produce department in a week, without any help. At one point, he said, he was reprimanded for “apple cores not being in perfect alignment.”

“When Cesario asked for assistance as had been given to other younger store directors during other store projects, [the manager] denied Cesario’s request and told him it was ‘his problem,’” the text reads.

Due to the stress of the situation, Cesario reportedly had an accident and was placed on medical leave until the end of December 2014.

The other plaintiffs in the case, Steve Cieslak, 56; Gregory LaRocco, 61; and James Lee, 59, recounted similar instances, claiming that younger workers weren’t treated with the same harsh mannerisms. Each also filed discrimination claims with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and were okayed to take their cases to court.

All four men were transferred to new Jewel-Osco locations after the company reworked its policies in 2011 to consolidate two store director positions per location to just one. Cesario was taken from a Wheaton store and placed in a Lombard one; Cieslak went from Chicago to Oak Park; LaRocco bounced from Wheaton to Villa Park to DeKalb; and Lee was transferred from Chicago to Oak Park to Downers Grove, and back to Chicago.

The men said that they were consistently placed in underperforming stores which had ongoing issues. Cieslak had to deal with competition from a brand-new Mariano’s that opened near his store and was hardly offered help, according to the lawsuit. Younger workers were allegedly offered help on a regular basis if they weren’t performing well.

LaRocco said in the complaint he started noticing discrimination in June of 2014. He said that, among other things, younger store managers weren’t being criticized for minor errors like older employees were, that they weren’t being given negative performance reviews and that they weren’t being threatened with losing their jobs.

LaRocco and Lee were eventually fired, after having earlier turned down severance packages in an attempt to keep working for the chain. Cesario and Cieslak have allegedly been placed on disability leave.

According to the complaint, they’ve all been replaced by younger managers.

While the lawsuit doesn’t specify how much money the former employees are asking for in court, it does explain they’re looking to be reimbursed for lost wages and benefits, front pay, back pay and attorney fees.

Read the full text of the lawsuit here.