Presentation by Christopher Avery, Director,
Business & Human Rights Resource Centre
panel: “The workplace: Addressing racial discrimination & promoting diversity”
United Nations, Geneva, 22 April 2009
My colleague Abiola Okpechi and I are glad to be on this panel with people whose day-to-day work
is focused on preventing racial discrimination and promoting diversity. The panel’s discussion
today will be frank and focused on practice rather than theory.
In selecting the panelists, we identified people who have a reputation for doing serious work in this
field – including representatives of two companies that have been working hard to promote
diversity.
At the outset I want to emphasise one important point: what we are talking about today is not
voluntary corporate social responsibility – we are talking about the fundamental human rights to
equality and non-discrimination, which must be respected by all companies in all countries.
At our NGO, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, as we track human rights impacts by
companies in over 180 countries, we regularly come across allegations of racial discrimination. I
suspect that for every allegation there are hundreds of unreported cases. Today I want to point to
five examples from the range of cases that have come to our attention:
The first two examples concern a group of people often subject to racial discrimination –
job applicants.
In France, the nonprofit organization SOS Racisme said that after they sent identical job
applications to French companies, some with European names, and some with African or Muslim-
sounding names, they found the applications with African or Muslim sounding names were
systematically discarded.
In parts of South Asia, discrimination against dalits is endemic, often preventing access to jobs in
the private sector.
In the next two examples, employees are the victims.
In the UK, an employment tribunal found a Pakistani employee was insulted daily by his white
managers. He was called 'Paki' 'dirty Arab’, 'Afghan terrorist', and 'homo fag'. Workmates displayed
a doctored photo of him in a Nazi uniform with Hitler.
In 2002 the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found racial discrimination at Xerox's
Cincinnati office: this took the form of racial slurs, swastikas, and black dolls with nooses around
their necks.
In the fifth example, we are reminded that the general public also can be subjected to racial
discrimination by companies.
In 2004 the US Department of Justice lodged a complaint against Cracker Barrel restaurants,
alleging that Cracker Barrel:
- allowed white servers to refuse to wait on African-American customers;
- segregated customer seating by race; and
- seated white customers before African-American customers who arrived earlier.
Cracker Barrel agreed to settle the lawsuit, which required it to implement far-reaching changes to
its policies and practices.
We also track positive steps taken by companies. Let me refer to two examples:
1. In 2007 Wal-Mart added diversity to the list of what the company expects from its major
suppliers – a reminder that companies need to look at their supply chain as well as their own
operations. Its legal department, which in 2007 was composed of 37% ethnic minorities, insists
that the outside law firms used by Wal-Mart have a diverse work force – the company has stopped
using a number of law firms that failed to meet its diversity requirements. It is important to point
out that these welcome and positive initiatives came at a time that Wal-Mart faced the largest
class-action lawsuit in US history, which alleged that as many as 1.5 million former and current
female employees were discriminated against in pay and promotions.
2. Coca-Cola, sued in 1999 for discrimination against African-Americans, denied the allegations
but agreed to settle the lawsuit for $192.5 million. In the settlement Coca-Cola agreed to allow an
independent task force of outside experts to work for four years monitoring its promotions, salaries,
performance evaluations and other employment practices. It agreed to implement task force
recommendations unless it could prove in court that implementation could somehow endanger the
company. The consensus is that Coca-Cola has made great strides since that settlement. For
each of the past six years Coca-Cola has placed in the top ten US firms in the annual “Top 50
Companies for Diversity” list produced by DiversityInc – most of those years it placed in the top
five.