Former Cedar Realty Chief Operating Officer Nancy H. Mozzachio filed a pay discrimination and a sexual harassment lawsuit against the company’s CEO Bruce Schanzer. It is just waiting for a Brooklyn judge to be deciding if the lawsuit has more merit to proceed.
As per Nancy Mozzachio’s statement of her filed lawsuit on November 2, she says that she has seen and heard Schanzer always making inappropriate comments to women as well as leering them. Schanzer is used to calling Nancy Mozzachio ‘babe’ as well as commenting about her breasts. After bringing on her desk a coffee cup from Dunkin Donuts, she claimed that he made a comment about bringing some double Ds to work. In addition, Schanzer was said to have been groping her from time to time at work that is totally unwanted.
After Nancy H. Mozzachio filed the lawsuit of pay disparity and sexual harassment, the company decided that it be best for her to be fired from work as well. After she was found out to be seeking some outside legal help from Cedar to discuss how she can go about filing her sexual harassment case, she was then terminated in February 2016. According to her, the meeting was canceled and then she was then terminated on the coming week.
Allegations were then investigated by Cedar Realty after a 2015 external investigator probe. However, according to Nancy Mozzachio, the investigator never probed on the allegations made by the female employees who were said to be harassed sexually by Schanzer. The Wall Street Journal has even made mention about one of the employees being asked by Schanzer what color of underwear she is wearing. In order for the investors not to know about this matter, the company has decided to pay the people who have filed some complaints against Schanzer about their being sexually harassed.
Nancy Mozzachio has basically become a success in this company. While she started off in the year 2003 as the director of leasing and in the year 2004 as the vice president of leasing, she then worked her way up until the year 2014 where she became the chief operating officer. Based on her lawsuit, she mentions that even if she is supposed to get higher compensation than the CFO as being the COO, she was being paid lower salary as well as a small bonus than the chief operating officer. Of course, for Cedar Realty, they are not true and are very much satisfied that after the board has done their investigations, the allegations were of no merit.
After considering the case of no merit, Nancy H. Mozzachio is not going to be backing down from it just yet. She will continue fighting for the right of women working in a safer workplace.