Fired supervisor’s retaliation claim crumbles – no proof the right people knew

Juan Dominguez worked as a guard and supervisor at a Halliburton facility in Duncan, Oklahoma, staffed by Weiser under a security contract. He had been at the facility since 2010 and was hired by Weiser when it took over the contract in 2018. He reported to site manager Joseph Yates, who reported to branch manager Mike Strickland in Fort Worth.

In late 2019, Yates went on medical leave. Dominguez stepped into some of his responsibilities and, during that period, told Weiser’s branch manager Strickland and Halliburton’s on-site security manager Chip Ford that he believed Yates gave preferential treatment to female employees. When Yates returned, Weiser shifted employee-relations duties away from Yates and gave them to Dominguez. Around the same time, the company gave Dominguez its first and only Officer of the Month award.

Months later, in April 2020, a separate complaint arrived. Another guard, Robert Culberson, told Weiser’s human resources department that Yates had discriminated against him because of his race. Weiser’s vice president of human relations, Charlene Lee-Sutherlin, opened an investigation and traveled to Duncan in June to interview employees.

On June 10, Dominguez sat for one of those interviews. The focus was Culberson’s complaint, but Dominguez used the conversation to raise his own concern – that Yates favored female guards, especially those who flirted with him. Lee-Sutherlin did not pass those remarks along to Yates or Strickland. Dominguez said he did not tell anyone else either.

What followed was a rapid sequence of events. Yates and Dominguez were already clashing over COVID-19 protocols and training for a new temperature-check procedure Halliburton wanted in place by June 15. Yates had caught Dominguez without a mask in the control room. Dominguez had left work for a COVID test without disclosing a potential family exposure until after receiving a negative result. Yates accused Dominguez of failing to train officers on the new procedures and, according to Dominguez, fabricated a claim that Dominguez had been told to attend a weekend training session he missed.