THE MISSING SEAT • WORK • WOMEN • EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

She Was Qualified to Repair the Pallets. The Company Allegedly Only Hired Men.

A job does not become “men’s work” because an employer has historically hired men to do it.

A woman applied to repair pallets at a warehouse in Spokane Valley, Washington. According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, she was qualified and ready to demonstrate that she could do the work. She says she was told the company only hired men.

If this were one strange hiring decision at one warehouse, it would still matter to the woman who lost the opportunity. But the EEOC says its investigation of Birchstone Management found something larger: since at least May 2020, qualified women were rejected for pallet-repair jobs not only in Spokane Valley but also at facilities in Amarillo and Houston, Texas; Lakewood, Washington; and Las Vegas, Nevada. According to the agency, men with similar or fewer qualifications were hired, or the company continued looking for applicants who were not women. [1]

Birchstone agreed in October 2026 to provide $55,000 to the woman who filed the charge and $445,000 for a class settlement fund. The agreement also requires hiring-policy changes, training, annual recordkeeping audits and two years of reporting to the EEOC. Women who applied for covered pallet-repair jobs between May 15, 2020 and July 31, 2025 may be eligible for the claims process described by the agency. [1]

There is an important legal distinction here. This was resolved through the EEOC’s pre-litigation conciliation process. It is not a court judgment finding Birchstone liable. EEOC settlements can resolve charges without an admission of liability. So the responsible way to write this is that the EEOC says its investigation found discrimination and Birchstone agreed to the settlement and corrective measures—not that a judge proved every allegation. [6]

The pallet case is not the whole story

The reason this case deserves more than a rewritten government press release is what appears when we look around it.

In May 2026, a federal court approved a $5.5 million consent decree resolving an EEOC lawsuit against Central Transport. The agency had alleged that the trucking company repeatedly refused to hire qualified female truck drivers nationwide for at least ten years, sometimes hiring men with less experience. The decree covers monetary relief, outside review of hiring practices, training and monitoring. A consent decree resolves litigation; it is not the same thing as a trial verdict after contested evidence. [2]

In July, TCI of Alabama agreed to a $2.6 million consent decree resolving an EEOC suit alleging that its recycling plant had refused to hire women as laborers for years and, according to the complaint, had at times directed staffing agencies to send only men. [3]

Other cases remain allegations rather than resolved findings. In June, the EEOC sued Safelite Fulfillment, alleging that qualified women were systematically denied technician jobs even when some scored higher than men on required assessments, and that applicants encountered comments describing technician work as a man’s job. Safelite has the right to contest those allegations. [4]

And on September 30, the EEOC sued Sequoias Tree Expert, alleging that women were denied groundsman, trimmer, foreman and driver positions because of their sex. That case also remains litigation, not an adjudicated finding of liability. [5]

These cases do not prove that every warehouse, trucking company, repair shop or field employer discriminates against women. They do not tell us what percentage of women applying for manual jobs experience discrimination. A collection of enforcement cases is not a national prevalence study.

But they do establish something worth examining: in 2026, the federal agency responsible for enforcing workplace discrimination law is still bringing or resolving cases in multiple industries in which the central allegation is remarkably old-fashioned—women were qualified to compete for the work, but sex allegedly became an unofficial job requirement.

What does the job actually require?

There are jobs with physical requirements. Employers are allowed to require workers to lift a certain weight, operate equipment safely, hold a commercial license, pass a skills test or perform the actual duties of the position. The sensible question is whether the applicant can meet those requirements.

“We usually hire men” answers a different question. It replaces an individual test of ability with an assumption about a group.

That distinction matters because stereotypes can hide inside language that sounds practical. Maybe the work is heavy. Fine—test whether the applicant can lift what the job requires. Maybe the job requires mechanical skill. Test the skill. Maybe it requires long hours, outdoor work or driving specialized equipment. Put those requirements in the job description and apply them consistently.

If a woman cannot perform an essential requirement, she can be rejected for the same reason a man can. But if she can perform it, her sex does not become evidence that she cannot.

Who benefited, who paid, and who was missing?

When hiring is based on stereotype rather than ability, men who receive opportunities they might otherwise have had to compete for can benefit. Employers may also preserve a familiar workforce because it feels easier than changing recruiting, facilities or workplace culture. That does not mean every man hired was unqualified. It means qualified women may never have received the same chance to compete.

The immediate cost falls on the applicant: lost wages, lost experience and a career path that may never begin. The employer can eventually pay too—through settlements, litigation, monitoring and the cost of rebuilding hiring systems that should have been neutral in the first place.

Who is missing? The woman who never appears in the workforce statistics because she was filtered out at the door. If we only look at an occupation after hiring has happened, a male-dominated workforce can start to look like proof that men simply prefer or are better suited to the work. Sometimes that may reflect applicant choices or qualifications. But enforcement cases like these force us to ask whether the hiring process itself helped produce the workforce we later describe as normal.

The recipe is boring. That is why it can work.

Employers do not need a slogan. They need a hiring system that can be audited. Write down the actual physical and technical requirements. Use the same standards for everybody. Keep applications and hiring records. Train the people who interview candidates. Compare who applied, who advanced and why people were rejected. If one group keeps disappearing at the same stage, investigate before an enforcement agency has to do it for you.

Applicants can keep copies of job postings, applications, emails and interview notes. If an interviewer says a job is only for men or women, write down who said it, when and where. Workers and applicants who believe they experienced sex discrimination can review the EEOC’s filing information and deadlines rather than assuming nothing can be done.

And for the rest of us, the question is simpler. The next time somebody calls a job “men’s work” or “women’s work,” ask what they actually mean. Is there a requirement being described—or just a workforce that looks the way it does because it has always looked that way?

The woman in the Birchstone case did not ask for the standard to be lowered. According to the EEOC record, she wanted the chance to show that she could meet it.

That is what equal opportunity is supposed to mean.

Ally = Action. 🪑

Sources and Receipts

Verification notice: Final two-pass review completed October 7, 2026. Birchstone was resolved through pre-litigation conciliation; Central Transport and TCI through consent decrees; Safelite and Sequoias remain allegations in lawsuits. These enforcement matters demonstrate recurring alleged or resolved hiring barriers but are not used as a statistical estimate of discrimination across entire industries.

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