Ex-engineering manager says he was fired for being white

Dick Foster, Rocky Mountain News

Published November 17, 2006 at midnight

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COLORADO SPRINGS - A former manager of a janitorial company has filed suit against the firm, saying he was fired because he is white and the company replaced him and others with Hispanics.

Steven Pagel filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Denver against Aspen Diversified Industries of Colorado Springs, a company that provides janitorial, maintenance, food service and construction services, employing workers with mental illness alongside able-bodied employees in its work force.

Pagel, the former director of engineering and construction services for the company, filed the lawsuit in August 2005, claiming that he was fired when he refused to take a demotion to a lesser job.

Pagel claimed that the company attempted to move him out of his job to give it to a Hispanic and that the company had a "practice of eliminating non-Hispanic individuals, particularly in management positions, and replacing them with individuals of Hispanic origin."

Aspen officials denied the charges in Pagel's lawsuit Thursday.

"He wasn't fired. He was offered a lateral move to another position that we felt he was more competent for, and he refused that position and quit," said company attorney Bill Landsberg.

Aspen was expanding and reorganizing its business at the time, Landsberg said.

Pagel "demonstrated that he did not have the ability to handle the larger construction projects that the company was undertaking," the company's legal response to Pagel's lawsuit states.

"Mr. Pagel was replaced in the position of general contractor by an individual with a master's degree and more extensive complex construction management experience," the company's response states.

Landsburg also denied Pagel's allegations of discrimination.

A pretrial conference is scheduled Dec. 22 in Denver.

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