Jersey City, NJ: A former employee of Jersey City will get half a million dollars as a settlement from a lawsuit claiming he was demoted and discriminated against.
An employee of Jersey City will get half a million dollars as a settlement from a lawsuit he filed against the city, claiming age discrimination in his demotion from manager to secretary.
It is anticipated that Wednesday, the city council will approve the settlement with Dan Wiley, a former Jersey City councilman and long-term employee of the Department of Recreation.
Former Department of Recreation Director Artie Williams allegedly relieved 72-year-old Wiley of his responsibilities as senior program analyst in 2018 and replaced him with a younger staffer, according to a 2020 lawsuit that was revised in 2022.
Williams allegedly told Wiley many times that he was “too old to work in recreation” and that “the children need to have someone younger to be on the field with them,” according to the lawsuit.
The city settled a comparable case involving Williams and the city with Sabrina Harrold for half a million dollars in August. City recreation department workers have filed at least two more lawsuits.
Litigation further claimed that Wiley was relocated from his home’s Caven Point recreation complex to the city’s Pershing Field. Wiley was able to visit his wife, who has multiple sclerosis, during her lunch hour while working at Caven Point, but his bosses still transferred him. That couldn’t have been done while working at Pershing Field.
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Claiming to have been demoted along with other employees who had voiced complaints of discrimination and retribution, Wiley was included in the lawsuit against the city’s reorganization of the recreation department as the Department of Recreation and Youth Development.
In the Housing Code Enforcement Division, Wiley was promoted from manager to secretary on or around March 24, 2020.
The parties involved have mutually agreed to refrain from criticizing each other or discussing the other, the case, or the settlement in any way, whether verbally, in writing, or on social media.