Banks, retailers paying out the most for discrimination and harassment

Virtually all of the Fortune 500 companies and other major employers have paid for claims of employment discrimination or harassment since 2000 — with banks and retailers disclosing the most penalties, according to the Good Jobs First report, “Big Business Bias-Employment Discrimination and Sexual Harassment at Large Corporations.”

$2.7B in penalties

While most of the lawsuits ended in confidential settlements, Good Jobs First was able to examine cases with disclosed verdicts or settlements, and found that 189 Fortune 500 companies have paid $1.9 billion in penalties. Of those, $356 million in 238 cases were resolved by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, $65 million in 85 cases were handled by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, and $1.5 billion involved 176 private lawsuits.

When expanding the search to include the Fortune 1000, the Fortune Global 500 and the Forbes list of America’s Largest Private companies, the total of disclosed penalties were $2.7 billion.

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The retail and financial services sectors topped the list of industries with the most disclosed penalties, each with just over $530 million. They are followed by food and beverage products ($252 million), pharmaceuticals ($209 million), freight and logistics ($187 million) and telecommunications ($166 million).

BOA has paid largest amount

Bank of America has paid the largest amount of disclosed discrimination penalties, with $210 million in settlements since 2000, followed by Coca-Cola ($200 million), Novartis ($183 million), Morgan Stanley ($150 million) and Abercrombie & Fitch ($90 million).

The largest shares of disclosed discrimination penalties were for the settlement of race and gender cases, mainly relating to hiring, promotion and pay, with each category totaling just over $1 billion. The next largest are for age discrimination cases, with more than $240 million in penalties, followed by disability cases at $155 million and sexual harassment cases at $123 million.

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Plaintiffs came from all levels of the workforce, though managers are more likely to be the plaintiffs in age discrimination cases than in racial bias claims, in which the plaintiffs are more often blue-collar workers.

Make sure ‘instances of abuse are not kept secret’

“Figuring out how to eliminate racism, sexism and other forms of bias in the workplace is a difficult task,” the authors write. “Part of the solution is to make sure that instances of abuse are not kept secret.”

This could be done by requiring publicly traded companies to reveal in their annual Securities and Exchange Commission 10-K filings how many cases have been filed against them, how those cases were resolved and how much they paid out in aggregate damages and settlements. The same requirement could be imposed on large federal contractors that are not publicly traded.

“The public availability of this information will put additional pressure on corporations to take steps to eradicate discrimination and harassment from their workplaces,” the authors write.

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