California moving company that touts its young, fit staff sued by feds for age discrimination: ‘No idea we were doing anything wrong’

A California-based moving company that boasts about its young, buff employees is being sued by the federal government for age discrimination.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against Meathead Movers for violating age-discrimination law by not hiring enough older workers, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Since launching in 1997, the Fresno-based company’s mission has been to hire student-athletes. Its social media posts show its youthful, muscled employees lifting weights and lifting boxes.

The employees, dubbed “Meatheads,” annually face off against each other in the Meathead Olympics, racing to assemble and leap over boxes. 

During moves, workers are required to run from the moving truck to the home when they’re empty-handed, according to the Journal.

The company states on its website that its “founding principle is to support athletes working in pursuit of their dream career path and that will never change.“

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Meathead Movers executives deny that they discriminate against older workers, claiming the job is simply too demanding for those not in tip-top shape.

“We are 100% open to hiring anyone at any age if they can do the job,” company owner Aaron Steed told the Journal. “People love working at Meathead, or they are turned off by how hard it is. You have to move furniture and run to get more.”

The EEOC, chaired by Charlotte Burrows, alleges that Meathead Movers’ marketing and hiring practices discourage older workers from applying, WSJ reported. Current employees are asked to seek new potential hires at local gyms and colleges, the agency claims.

The agency told the outlet that discouragement bias can be present in job ads, marketing materials and intrusive job application questions, like asking about a student’s class schedule.

EEOC has been looking into the company since 2017 on its own and did not stem from a complaint as most of its investigations are. Last year, it received more than 70,000 complaints and filed 91 employment discrimination lawsuits, according to the newspaper.

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The two sides tried to negotiate a settlement, with the agency demanding $15 million before lowering that to about $5 million, according to internal emails reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

Meathead countered with a $750,000 offer to settle. The EEOC filed the suit in September.

“We had no idea we were doing anything wrong by being a moving company that hires a lot of student-athletes,” Steed told WSJ.

“We want to change and evolve, but we can’t agree to go out of business doing it.”

Burrows was appointed chair of the EEOC by President Biden. Since Democrats took control of the agency in August, commissioners have since voted seven times on age discrimination matters. They voted on age issues just three times this year before that.

She has vowed to enforce age-discrimination laws regarding age bias as nearly a quarter of the country’s workforce is aged 55 and older, and the agency appears to be aggressively pursuing age-discrimination cases.

According to the Labor Department, the number of seniors over the age of 65 in the workforce will grow by a third over the next 10 years.

The Post has reached out to the EEOC for comment on the lawsuit.

Advocates for older Americans lauded the agency taking on age discrimination.

“Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is over 50. I’m pretty sure he would be good at moving boxes,” Bill Alvarado Rivera, senior vice president for litigation at AARP, an association for the rights of older people, told the Journal.

“That kind of stereotype about who could be a good mover has no place in an economy that values individuals.”