Filipina sues Vegas casino employer for pregnancy discrimination

A former Filipina Las Vegas casino employee is seeking a $100,000 in damages after her employer allegedly fired her for being pregnant and saying “bye bye” instead of goodbye when speaking to clients on the telephone.

Melodee Megia, a former employee at The Cosmopolitan Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, filed a lawsuit against the hotel for pregnancy discrimination and a class-action suit for workers’ wages, saying employees were not paid for the time they had to wait for and change into their uniforms on a daily basis, according to ABC News.

Megia has worked as a room service sales employee at the hotel from November 2010 to August 2011, according to reports.

Her lawyer Mark Thierman told ABC that his client was “denigrated verbally and was mistreated because of her pregnancy.”

Thierman cited one instance where her supervisor made derogatory remarks after asking her to deliver a pack of condoms to an assistant to provide to a hotel guest.

Megia’s supervisor said, “Isn’t it too late for that? You should have thought about it before getting knocked up.”

“From that point forward, the director of room service frequently gave [Megia] dirty looks or shook his head disapprovingly,” the suit said, according to ABC.

According to the report, Megia was fired when she was eight months pregnant. The stated reason

In August 2011, when she was eight months pregnant, the “stated reason for [her] termination was that she said ‘bye bye’ instead of ‘good bye’ on the telephone to a room service customer,” according to the suit.

“In fact, this was merely a pretext as [Megia] had been subject to harassing conduct and other pretextual discipline leading up to her termination since the time her pregnancy was learned by [the hotel],” the suit added, according to ABC.

The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas issued a statement, “As a matter of company policy, we do not comment on pending litigation.”

Megia is also part of an $18-million class-action lawsuit against the hotel. The lawsuit alleges the hotel did not pay their employees for mandatory time spent changing into their work uniform.

Therian told ABS-CBN, “There are a lot of employees at The Cosmopolitan — over 4,000. That’s a half an hour a day — everyday — for every employee. That’s a lot of time.” Joseph Pimentel/Asian Journal