Black Meetings and Tourism

Black Meetings & Tourism February/March 2009: www.blackmeetingsandtourism.com 32 BY MICHAEL BENNETT D ateline Dallas: A jury ruled AT&T Corp., racially dis- criminated against an African-American worker and ordered the telecommunications giant to pay over $410,000 in damages – the irony of it all is that AT&T has ranked near the top in its diversity training and most desirable places to work for African-Americans. The plaintiff, Lakecious Edwards was passed over multiple times for promotion in favor of lesser-qualified individuals. Edwards followed the company pro- tocol for discrimination complaints, which includ- ed calling a third-party vendor 800-number that essentially ignored her pleas for assistance. Edwards' earlier complaints died a slow death languishing for 180 days – the limit estab- lished by Texas law to file suit in state court or 300 days – the limit for federal lawsuits. Dateline Chicago: A Federal District Judge entered a $2 million consent decree resolving a workplace discrimination lawsuit against Cracker Barrel restaurant. Part of the plaintiff's case stipulated that Black employees were subjected to racially charged language in the workplace that included the "n-word," "you people" and a series of racially insensitive comments I won't repeat out of respect for our readers. Dateline Northern California: A judge grants final approval to settle a class action lawsuit against Abercrombie and Fitch that required the clothing retailer to pay $40 million dollars in damages to Latino, African-American, Asian American and female applicants and employees who charged the company with discrimination. The settlement also required the company to institute programs to promote diversity. The carnage of discrimination lawsuits or allegations of race-based impropriety by some of America's largest compa- nies reads like a Who's Who list and the monetary losses are staggering. There's Fedex, at $55 million, Sodexho, $80 mil- lion, Walgreens $24 million and Coca Cola $192 million. These aren't isolated cases. Costco, Morgan Stanley, Eastman Kodak, BellSouth Corp and Wal-Mart have also been pun- ished for race, sex or gender discrimination. The common denominator in these class action lawsuits – all have occurred within the past decade, and most within the last five years. These lawsuits beg a whole series of questions that must be explored. Did these corporations have diversity training in place? If so, why did they fail and if not, why not? And does diversity training really work? In the case of Abercrombie & Fitch, it appears their entire executive team philosophy dated back to the turn of the century – the 19th Century. And how could a company with the success of Cracker Barrel fail so miserably at policing their own, given the tremendous numbers of African-Americans frequenting their establish- ments? The shear size of many of these companies presents a tremendous challenge to insure diversity and behavior mod- ification reaches all employees. Our industry is not immune to discrimination complaints, but we are fortunate that so many have adopted measures to confront these issues without suffering the indignity of a class action lawsuit. Several hoteliers consistently rank at or near the top of diversity regardless of industry such as Marriott International, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, The Walt Disney Company, MGM Mirage, Carlson Hotels Worldwide and Hilton. A white paper entitled A Retrospective View of Corporate Diversity Training from 1964 to the Present written by Rohini Anand of Sodexo and Mary-Frances Winters of the Winters Group states that, "by the end of the 1990s practitioners (of corporate diversity) were more likely to understand that diver- sity could not be relegated to a program, but rather that it had to be viewed as an ongoing business process, like quality and become integrated into the core strategy of the organization, and thus, positioning diversity education as a business driver gained solid footing by 1999." These hoteliers understand the business dynamics and "n-word," "you people"

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