By FireRescue1 Staff
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A firefighter was awarded nearly $780,000 after winning a lawsuit that claimed he was passed over for a promotion because of his race and age.
Alaska Public Media reported that Korean-American firefighter Jeff Graham, 50, filed a discrimination lawsuit after being passed over for an engineer promotion despite working for the Anchorage Fire Department as a mechanic and firefighter for over 20 years.
Graham’s attorney, Jeff Jarvi, said Graham scored well on the first engineer exams, but failed the subjective oral exam because the testers were biased against him.
“It’s really about the old boys club that is the Anchorage Fire Department,” Jarvi said. “It’s over 90 percent white men, and they can pick and choose who they want to pick and choose regardless of whether they’re the most qualified person for the job.”
The jury decided that Graham had been treated unfairly, but the verdict was instead for breach of contract instead of discrimination. He was awarded $778,951.69.
Graham said he cared more about seeing a change in fire department testing and the promotion process than getting the money, but Jarvi said he has yet to see a change in the department.
AFD deputy chief of operations Jodie Hettrick said he’s confused about what needs to be changed.
“It was a little frustrating for our side not to know exactly what they felt that we did wrong,” Hettrick said. “Because we want to treat our employees fairly and equally and make sure that they don’t feel the department is doing something wrong. We want to fix things. It’s just hard to do that when you don’t have all the details.”
Graham continues to work at the fire department and said he plans to stay there until retirement.