A "snitch" label, two disciplinary boards, a 490-mile commute - then the pink slip
A former technician at Alyeska Pipeline Service Company says the company punished him for years and ultimately fired him because he opposed sexual harassment at work and helped the company's own investigation.
Robert Saxton, who worked at the Valdez Marine Terminal in Alaska from September 2021 to December 2025, filed his complaint on April 30, 2026 in the US District Court for the District of Alaska. The case is brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Saxton is seeking back pay, front pay, compensatory damages, and punitive damages.
According to the filing, the trouble started around November 2022. Saxton says a male coworker, Torin Smith, regularly grabbed, struck, or attempted to grab or strike Saxton and other employees in the genitals during work hours - conduct Smith referred to, according to the complaint, as "sack tapping." Saxton says he told Smith to stop and defended others. He also objected when Smith displayed a defaced, life-sized cardboard cutout of another employee in the workplace.
Saxton's supervisor, Jeff Woods, was on hand for some of the incidents and did not step in, the complaint alleges. The filing describes Woods and Smith as close friends.
When a female coworker filed an anonymous complaint through Alyeska's Employee Concerns Program, Saxton took part as a witness. The complaint alleges Woods then disclosed who the supposedly anonymous complainant was to other employees - and the rest of Saxton's time at the company, he says, was shaped by the fallout.
According to the filing, coworkers told Saxton that Woods began calling him a "snitch." After Saxton told Woods about briefings he was giving to a corporate officer on employee retention, hiring, and salary issues, the complaint says Woods screamed at him and threatened to "kick him off terminal."
What followed, Saxton alleges, was a continuous course of retaliatory conduct: being singled out for minor matters that other technicians did without consequence, attempts to block his promotion, denied mileage reimbursement, and warnings over badging practices he had permission to use.
A workplace survey in late 2023 made things worse, the complaint alleges. Saxton used it to anonymously report Woods's conduct. Woods's superior, described in the filing as Woods's good friend, redacted respondent names but released the text of the responses. Because Saxton's answer carried personal detail, the complaint says Woods could identify him as the author.
Saxton then went through Alyeska's internal channels. He contacted the Employee Concerns Program in March 2024 and filed a written complaint in April 2024 saying, according to the filing, that he was "extremely concerned about further retaliation and harassment tactics." He sent documentation to a senior member of Human Resources. The complaint alleges Alyeska did nothing meaningful in response.
Discipline came instead. On or about November 27, 2024, the company convened a Disciplinary Review Board. The initial panel, according to the filing, included Woods himself, Woods's superior, and another Alyeska manager. Woods was removed only after Saxton objected. The board demoted Saxton from Level 6 to Level 5 for twelve months with a reduction in pay, later cut to six months on internal appeal. A second board followed on March 25, 2025 over alleged time reporting deficiencies, procurement and process violations, and failure to follow directives.
In April 2025, the company moved Saxton off a two-week-on, two-week-off schedule onto a one-week-on, one-week-off rotation, requiring him to commute the 490 miles between his home in Soldotna and the terminal every week. The complaint alleges other technicians who had not raised concerns were not put on the same schedule.
On October 1, 2025, Alyeska told Saxton he was being included in a reduction in force. The complaint says the company's stated criteria for selection included documented discipline - meaning the two boards Saxton alleges were retaliatory in the first place. He was terminated on December 5, 2025.
For HR leaders, the complaint reads as a chain of process questions: an investigation in which the supervisor allegedly identified the anonymous complainant, internal HR submissions allegedly used against the complainant inside disciplinary proceedings, a disciplinary panel originally seated with the supervisor accused of retaliating, and a RIF that carried a contested disciplinary record forward. Saxton filed his EEOC charge on January 27, 2026 and received a Notice of Right to Sue on February 3, 2026.
The allegations have not been tested in court. Alyeska Pipeline Service Company has not yet filed a response, and no court has ruled.
