Probe Sought of Curbs on Restroom Visits : Labor: Female workers at a Nabisco plant in Oxnard say they were forbidden to use bathroom except at break times. They allege gender bias and threaten to sue the firm, which declines to comment.

Federal officials have been asked to launch an investigation into the restriction of bathroom privileges for female employees of a Nabisco Foods plant in Oxnard, a practice so prohibitive that some women say they were forced to wear diapers on the job.

Some assembly line workers at the 3rd Street factory say they have suffered bladder infections because they have been forbidden from going to the bathroom when they need to, according to complaints filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Workers also accuse Nabisco of discriminating against women by restricting their restroom visits while allowing men to go whenever they want.

A Nabisco spokeswoman in New Jersey refused to comment on the allegations because of pending litigation.

“They would say that we would have to wait, that we couldn’t go until break time,” said Lydia Hernandez, a 25-year employee who said she lost her job in 1993 after tangling with company supervisors about the policy.

Hernandez said she was among dozens of workers at the Nabisco plant--which makes steak sauce, chili pepper products and the world’s supply of Grey Poupon mustard--who resorted to wearing diapers and other means of protection because of the bathroom restrictions.

“It’s humiliating to have to walk in there like a baby,” the 59-year-old Saticoy resident said. “It was hell, a nightmare from the minute I got into work in the morning not knowing whether I would be able to hold it.”

Women’s bathroom privileges have been at the center of a number of public debates in recent years. At least 10 states, including California, now mandate “potty parity” through laws that require public spaces such as theaters and stadiums to provide more toilets for women than for men. Such laws are based on research findings that women need about twice as much time in restrooms as men. And in Texas, the EEOC is investigating a case in which a baseball cap maker allegedly fired women rather than add a toilet.

But lawyers representing the women in their fight against the Oxnard company say they have never heard of workers elsewhere having to wear diapers on the job because use of the restroom was restricted.

Eight workers at the Oxnard plant have filed sex discrimination complaints with the EEOC in recent months.

The complaints are precursors to a class-action lawsuit being prepared by lawyers in Oxnard and Chicago, the women’s lawyers said.

Oxnard attorney Gregory Ramirez said he was shocked when Hernandez walked into his office last May and told him about the situation.

Before taking the case, Ramirez said, he asked Hernandez to bring in other workers to back up her story. She gathered women who told of being denied restroom visits even if they had a doctor’s note.

“We’re talking about women in their 50s and 60s who work under these conditions just because they are afraid of losing their jobs,” Ramirez said.

The Oxnard plant employs more than 250 workers on the average, the company spokeswoman said.

The women who filed the federal complaints are seasonal workers, hired during a peak period that runs from about July to October. During that time, the workers said, hundreds of women on the food processing line share 10 to 15 bathroom stalls.

It was only in the past few years that supervisors began cracking down on bathroom privileges, the workers said.

Restroom visits often were limited to break times, they said. Some of those caught sneaking off the line to use the restroom said they were threatened with being sent home without pay.

“I have worn Kotex and toilet paper in the past and had a urinary tract infection in 1992,” 37-year employee Connie Jimenez wrote in her EEOC complaint. “These practices are discriminatory in that men are not restricted in using the bathroom as women are.”

In an interview last week, Jimenez, 62, said she worked in constant fear of losing bladder control.

“Some of the women even cry because they can’t hold it,” she said. “I want that to stop already. It’s too much.”

Jimenez and others say they took their complaints to their local Teamsters union, but were told nothing could be done because bathroom regulations are a matter of company policy.

Scott Dennison, the union’s newly elected secretary-treasurer, acknowledged that union leaders have ignored complaints about the issue.

“We do know that the previous administrations looked the other way on those complaints when women at Nabisco brought it to their attention,” Dennison said last week.

He said the union’s new administration, which took office in October, has pledged to support the women’s fight against Nabisco.

“What you’re really dealing with is how an employer treats its people,” he said. “This is crazy. We’ll go as far as striking them if we have to.”

The EEOC has 180 days to investigate the complaint, or it could choose not to investigate. After that, the lawyers say, they intend to file a class-action suit.

Just last week, California Rural Legal Assistance in Oxnard agreed to join the team of lawyers preparing the case.

Lee Pliscou, an attorney with that agency who helped file sex-discrimination suits against two Ventura County packinghouses, said other factories with assembly lines employ workers whose job is to substitute for those who need to use the restroom.

“Hearing these stories that these women have told, I’m saddened and angered,” Pliscou said. “I feel embarrassed that our community would permit this. I’m embarrassed this is how we treat people.”