Subscribe by RSS
Subscribe by EmailThe Pharmacy America Trusts Is Now Charged With Class Action Race Discrimination
11 current and former Walgreens managers have just filed a class action lawsuit against the company, claiming that
the company pushed African-Americans to run stores in low-income neighborhoods where they are least likely to earn high bonuses.
This could be a huge case, as the lawsuit claims the class could represent thousands of other African-Americans in 45 states.
The case has been filed in East St. Louis, Illinois.
Read here for more information.
Given the potential size of the class, this could be a very interesting case.
Related Posts
Posted by Michael Harris
on June 26, 2005
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing.
Comments
For those seeking information concerning this suit please see http://www.walgreensclass.com.
Counsel for the Plaintiffs
Dang, Michael, you beat me to this one. Another link, to the AP story in St. Louis Post Dispatch, is:
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories.nsf/
story/5FFD0D00B3DA5277862570270041D05A?OpenDocument
One suspect factual allegation in this AP story: Walgreens “uses an internal system to categorize stores based on race and income.”
Sure they do. I go to a black-majority Walgreens in my neighborhood on a regular basis.
Guess what? They carry certain products “white stores” won’t carry (at least not in such quantity and variety). Like certain cosmetics, hair products, and even African-American-oriented Hallmark greeting cards. So of course they categorize stores.
Now using that information to segregate staff is a different matter.
I’m just pointing out that these class action lawyers are again piecing together a case that includes facts of questionable relevance and using such facts cleverly to create negative publicity at the outset — and the press is eating it up.
To the credit of the Florida paper Michael cites, they catch this and say: “Retail chains frequently use demographic data such as income, ethnicity and other buying habits to locate and stock their stores.”