“LOS ANGELES - Abercrombie & Fitch Co. has agreed to pay $40 million to black, Hispanic and Asian employees and job applicants to settle a class-action federal discrimination lawsuit that accused the clothing retailer of promoting whites at the expense of minorities, lawyers said Tuesday.
The settlement…requires the company to adhere to a consent decree that calls for the implementation of new policies and programs to promote diversity and prevent discrimination in its workforce. Abercrombie & Fitch also must pay about $10 million to monitor compliance and cover attorneys’ fees, although the agreement contains no admission of wrongdoing by the company.
“We have, and always have had, no tolerance for discrimination. We decided to settle this suit because we felt that a long, drawn out dispute would have been harmful to the company and distracting to management,” chairman and CEO Mike Jeffries said in a statement Tuesday.”
This if theft. It is theft from the shareholders and is discrimination against the white employees. There is almost certainly no basis for these claims - there virtually never are - but the race and sex bias shakedown industry does not need an basis - it is trading on embarrassment and the risk of brand damage.
The lawyers and baiters normally wait until the company is already embarrassed by some previous concocted brouhaha , then strike with the big one - the class action suite.
In the case of Abercrombie & Fitch, they were involved in a race embarrassment a few years ago where T shirts purportedly insulting to Asians, were sold from the stores.
Once the wall is breached the lawyers pour in through the gap.
Interestingly, the company was under attack by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission too. It joined the private plaintiffs in the lawsuit which “accused the company of engaging in recruiting and hiring practices that exclude minorities and adopting a virtually all-white marketing campaign.”
“The retail industry and other industries need to know that businesses cannot discriminate against individuals under the auspice of a marketing strategy or a particular ‘look’” said Eric Dreiband, the EEOC’s general counsel.
So Abercrombie & Fitch had too many white models in their marketing materials.
Companies no longer have the right to market to whomever they choose and style themselves according to their tastes or campaigns. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will handle all be the ultimate client sign off in the advertising industry henceforth.
The irony is that the advertising and fashion industries massively over-represent minorities in campaigns and adverts. If we have strict quotas there will be fewer blacks and Asian models on billboards and advertisements and Benetton will be sued for racism.
It is like the open joke of the number of black and Asian TV presenters in the UK. Based on their numbers on the TV one would think that non-white people were the majority in the UK.
Lastly, I wonder if the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will now turn its attentions to companies like FUBU (For us by us) - the openly racist black-run clothing label?
Why not go over to fubu.com and count then number of white models. Finished? How many? Say again?
One? One white girl? That’s it?
Too black? Discriminating against whites? Of course not!
But I smell a class action suite brewing on a lawyers desk somewhere…
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