kev
06-17-2003, 11:17 AM
Abercrombie & Fitch accused of discrimination in hiring
Suit claims retailer avoids employing minorities on sales floor
Steven Greenhouse, New York Times Tuesday, June 17, 2003
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Abercrombie & Fitch, the clothing retailer that appeals to the college set with blond-haired, blue-eyed models, was sued on Monday for racial discrimination, accused of favoring whites for its sales floor jobs.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, charges that Abercrombie discriminates against Hispanics, Asians and blacks in its hiring as it seeks to project what the company calls the "classic American" look.
Abercrombie, whose upscale casual clothes have made it one of the hottest companies for teenagers and college students, is accused of favoring whites by concentrating its hiring on certain colleges, fraternities and sororities.
Several Hispanic and Asian plaintiffs said in interviews that when they applied for jobs, store managers steered them to stockroom jobs and away from the sales floor because they did not project what the company called the "A & F look."
That look, these plaintiffs said, is overwhelmingly white, judging from the low percentage of minority members who work on the sales floor and from the company's posters and quarterly magazine, which overwhelmingly features white models.
In an affidavit, a former assistant manager of an Abercrombie store in Boston said that of the 110 employees there, two or three were black, one was Hispanic, and the other 106 were white.
"It's quite clear that they go to great pains to make sure all of their managers and assistant managers know what they're looking for and what those managers will be judged on: Does your work force fit our all-white image?" said Thomas A. Saenz, vice president for litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Eduardo Gonzalez, a junior at Stanford University, said that when he applied last August to the Abercrombie store in Santa Clara, a manager said he should apply for the stock room or an overnight position.
"It was like, wow, they're pushing me to the only nonvisible jobs, they don't want me to be seen in public," Gonzalez said. "And it was weird: all the store's posters were white, blond-haired, blue-eyed."
A spokesman for the New Albany, Ohio, clothier, which has about 600 stores and 22,000 employees, said Monday that the company would not comment because it had not yet seen the legal papers.
Several plaintiffs said that top managers often visited stores and examined pictures of employees to determine whether they conformed with the Abercrombie & Fitch look. Often, the legal papers say, store managers approach attractive white customers who have the "look" and urge them to apply for sales jobs.
Juancarlos Gomez-Montejano, who worked in sales at an Abercrombie in Santa Monica, said that after a corporate official visited his store, he and four other minority sales workers were terminated, told that the staff was too large. A few weeks later, he said, the store hired five white fraternity members from UCLA.
He complained to the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, which filed the lawsuit along with the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein.
The lawyers are asking for an unspecified amount in back wages and punitive damages.
Suit claims retailer avoids employing minorities on sales floor
Steven Greenhouse, New York Times Tuesday, June 17, 2003
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abercrombie & Fitch, the clothing retailer that appeals to the college set with blond-haired, blue-eyed models, was sued on Monday for racial discrimination, accused of favoring whites for its sales floor jobs.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, charges that Abercrombie discriminates against Hispanics, Asians and blacks in its hiring as it seeks to project what the company calls the "classic American" look.
Abercrombie, whose upscale casual clothes have made it one of the hottest companies for teenagers and college students, is accused of favoring whites by concentrating its hiring on certain colleges, fraternities and sororities.
Several Hispanic and Asian plaintiffs said in interviews that when they applied for jobs, store managers steered them to stockroom jobs and away from the sales floor because they did not project what the company called the "A & F look."
That look, these plaintiffs said, is overwhelmingly white, judging from the low percentage of minority members who work on the sales floor and from the company's posters and quarterly magazine, which overwhelmingly features white models.
In an affidavit, a former assistant manager of an Abercrombie store in Boston said that of the 110 employees there, two or three were black, one was Hispanic, and the other 106 were white.
"It's quite clear that they go to great pains to make sure all of their managers and assistant managers know what they're looking for and what those managers will be judged on: Does your work force fit our all-white image?" said Thomas A. Saenz, vice president for litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Eduardo Gonzalez, a junior at Stanford University, said that when he applied last August to the Abercrombie store in Santa Clara, a manager said he should apply for the stock room or an overnight position.
"It was like, wow, they're pushing me to the only nonvisible jobs, they don't want me to be seen in public," Gonzalez said. "And it was weird: all the store's posters were white, blond-haired, blue-eyed."
A spokesman for the New Albany, Ohio, clothier, which has about 600 stores and 22,000 employees, said Monday that the company would not comment because it had not yet seen the legal papers.
Several plaintiffs said that top managers often visited stores and examined pictures of employees to determine whether they conformed with the Abercrombie & Fitch look. Often, the legal papers say, store managers approach attractive white customers who have the "look" and urge them to apply for sales jobs.
Juancarlos Gomez-Montejano, who worked in sales at an Abercrombie in Santa Monica, said that after a corporate official visited his store, he and four other minority sales workers were terminated, told that the staff was too large. A few weeks later, he said, the store hired five white fraternity members from UCLA.
He complained to the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, which filed the lawsuit along with the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein.
The lawyers are asking for an unspecified amount in back wages and punitive damages.