The American Trucking Association (ATA) is facing allegations of age and racial discrimination from three employees it fired in 2024.
The three plaintiffs who are alleging age discrimination–Lorrie Grant, Daniel Ronan, and Joseph Terry–were all connected to ATA’s Transport Topics magazine and related media offerings.
Grant is also charging ATA with racial discrimination in the suit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The ax fell on all three employees on March 22, 2024. According to the lawsuit filed Thursday, employees at Transport Topics were awaiting word that day on a new publisher and strategy for the media property. And while there were changes made, no new publisher was named and the three workers were let go prior to the meeting to announce a new management structure.
On the day of the firings, Grant was 60 and had worked for ATA for 12 years. She was managing editor of Transport Topics.
Ronan was 64 and had been at ATA for six years. His role was senior reporter and managing producer of multimedia. He was also a public voice for Transport Topics, with regular hosting of Transport Topics’ shows it produced in conjunction with SiriusXM’s Road Dog Trucking among other ATA media products.
Terry was 52 and like Grant had been with ATA for a dozen years. He was a senior designer with ATA with a high amount of work for Transport Topics and related media properties.
Process began in 2023
The lawsuit spells out a history that began with the departure in October 2023 of Sue Hensley, who had been publisher of Transport Topics as well as senior vice president of communications & public affairs at ATA. (The suit later alleges that Hensley was terminated at the age of 52).
ATA’s CFO Megan Massito was named interim publisher, according to the lawsuit. A search for a permanent publisher commenced with the ATA hiring Robert Lake to lead the search. He is described in the lawsuit as a talent acquisition consultant with Randall Reilly Talent, Inc. Randall Reilly publishes several magazines and other media products in competition with Transport Topics (and full disclosure, FreightWaves also).
The lawsuit says the three employees who have brought suit against ATA were interviewed by Massito and Lake in December 2023. The issue of productivity was raised, according to the lawsuit, and one question was why didn’t Ronan have more bylines.
Grant pushed back against the allegation that Ronan was less productive, pointing out non-bylined work in other media offerings under the Transport Topics umbrella.
But, the suit charges, age, not productivity, was at the heart of the push by Massito and Lake.
“Obviously, neither Ms. Massito nor Mr. Lake had any idea what the older employees’ work actually contributed to ATA but they knew, of course, that Ms. Grant was 60, Mr. Ronan was 64 and Mr. Terry was 52 and that all three employees had no plans of retirement,” the suit says. The two executives instead, the suit adds, “determined that the best course of action was to fire all three.”
The suit charges that a “script” was written to deliver to the broader staff after the firings, which skewed younger than the dismissed employees.
The tape was rolling
One aspect of the meeting not known at the time by the presenters was that an employee on the call recorded it.
That was the meeting where a new permanent publisher was to be announced. The three dismissed employees had previously been invited to individual meetings where they were given their walking papers, told they were the victims of budget cuts. (A 65-year-old employee, Peggy Smith, also was dismissed on March 22, 2023. She is not a plaintiff in the lawsuit).
According to the lawsuit, Massito was recorded on the Microsoft Teams meeting as saying that ATA was “hiring and promoting ‘younger talent’ for whom the ATA was providing a ‘succession plan forward.’”
“Additionally, she stated that the ATA’s goal was to become more ‘agile,’ ‘strong’ and ‘viable’–all obvious stereotypes of ‘young people’ that excluded the four employees fired an hour prior,” the suit says.
A new publisher was not announced. Instead, Massito would remain as publisher and continue to be ATA’s CFO.
The lawsuit does not hold back in critiquing other parts of the ATA organization. The Transport Topics sales team (which did not experience layoffs), the suit said, “had a long history of underperformance.” ATA CEO Chris Spear, just before the layoffs, received a “massive discretionary bonus:” of almost $5 million, “proving that the claim of ‘cutting costs’ was mere pretext for firing the plaintiffs.” The replacement for Grant, Joe Antoshak, is “significantly less qualified” than Grant for his role as editor of multiplatform,” according to the suit.
Other older employees identified
The suit also lists eight other ATA employees dismissed in recent years, all but one of whom were let go by ATA in their sixties.
The three dismissed employees had an average of 60.25 years at the time of their dismissal, the suit says. The staff members who survived the purge had an average age of 49.6 years, it adds.
Grant’s racial discrimination count in the lawsuit lists five other “employees of color” whom ATA had dismissed previously, though the lawsuit does not identify when they lost their jobs.
“At the time of her termination, Ms. Grant was the only Black woman on the Transport Topics senior leadership team, which is now devoid of racial diversity,” the lawsuit says. “The ‘elimination’ of Ms. Grant’s job role was mere pretext for her termination given that all of her duties are still being completed by white employees, including a new hire.”
The suit says Grant and Ronan have not been able to find full time employment since their dismissals. Both have “suffered serious and significant financial harm,” the suit says. Terry has found other employment, the suit says, though it took many months. His new employer was not identified.
A spokesman for ATA declined comment, citing ongoing litigation.
The suit is asking damages “in excess of” $75,000, with no upper limit suggested.
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