Immigrants Claim Wal-Mart Fired Them to Provide Jobs for Local Residents

Immigrants Claim Wal-Mart Fired Them to Provide Jobs for Local Residents
By DAN FROSCH
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: February 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/us/09walmart.html?th&emc=th


SILVERTHORNE, Colo. — A small group of West African men who came to the Rockies in search of economic opportunity are embroiled in a dispute with Wal-Mart, accusing it of a raft of discriminatory actions. Most say they were dismissed because supervisors wanted to give their jobs to local people in need of work.

Wal-Mart, which has a history of discrimination and labor complaints but has increased efforts to promote diversity at its stores, denies the accusations.

A spokesman, Greg Rossiter, said most of the men who had filed the complaints were part of a larger group of 90 employees of all different backgrounds dismissed last year after a management change at a store in Avon, Colo.

“These allegations just don’t accurately reflect the working environment at these stores,” Mr. Rossiter said. “We have a diverse group of associates, including many from West Africa, who are finding good career opportunities.”

In complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the 10 men said they had all worked for Wal-Mart for a few years, mostly without incident, at a variety of jobs at three stores in Avon, Glenwood Springs and Rifle.

But things changed in 2008 and 2009, when new managers took over the stores, according to the complaints as well as interviews here with four of the men, who continue to gather weekly at a cramped apartment and talk of their hopes of getting new jobs.

In January 2009, six complainants said, a new manager at the Avon store called a meeting of workers — virtually all West African — and said: “I don’t like some of the faces I see here. There are people in Eagle County who need jobs.”

Three other men, who worked at the Glenwood Springs store, said in the complaint that an assistant manager there, also new, had made a similar comment at a meeting of mostly West African workers.

One of them, Mamadou Sy, said in his complaint: “Directing himself towards the West Africans present, he said, ‘Wow, there are a lot of Africans, and I don’t like some of the faces I see here.’ We felt as if he was threatening us.”

Most of the employees said they had been repeatedly disciplined for not meeting production requirements. Eventually, they were fired. Most of the workers had never been reprimanded before, and non-African workers were not subject to the same criticism, they said.

Mr. Sy, 61, said he was fired in September after his supervisors told him he had to greatly increase the number of boxes he was stocking. He was not physically able to do so, he said.

“I worked here for more than three years and never had any complaints about my job,” he said. “Now, we have all been getting fired. We felt it was racism.”

Ophelia Hinojosa, a former assistant night manager at the Wal-Mart in Avon, said her supervisors had pressured her to discipline the men for not working fast enough, even though she believed they performed well.

“They were trying to get most of the Africans out,” said Ms. Hinojosa, who quit in April because, she said, her job had become too stressful. “A lot of them had been there for a long time. They weren’t being treated right.”

Idrissa Tall said that last summer, after nearly three years of employment, he was suddenly fired for not stocking shelves fast enough.

“We saw a lot hard changes,” Mr. Tall said. “It hurt us; it shocked us. Everybody that got fired got fired for the same reason — because we are African.”

Mr. Rossiter, the Wal-Mart spokesman, denied that the West Africans had been singled out for discipline and said many other workers at the Avon store had been laid off as well.

“Since that time, the Avon store has continued to hire and promote West African associates,” he said. Three West Africans were promoted to supervisory positions last year, he said.

All 10 complaints also stated that West African workers, who are Muslim, were refused short prayer breaks. White and Hispanic workers, they said, were permitted unscheduled cigarette breaks.

Wal-Mart denied the accusation, and Mr. Rossiter said the company followed the law with respect to requests for religious accommodation. The law requires employers to reasonably accommodate employees’ religious beliefs.

The employees who filed the complaints are seeking back pay. An employment commission spokesman, David Grinberg, said that federal law prohibited the commission from commenting and that it could take months to investigate a complaint.

Since the mid-1990s, the commission has filed about 60 employment-discrimination lawsuits against Wal-Mart.

Last year, the company agreed to pay $17.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that accused it of discriminating against African-Americans applying for jobs as truck drivers. And it is now facing the largest employment-discrimination class-action suit in American history, a sex-discrimination suit brought on behalf of more than 1.5 million women who are current or former employees.

But in the last six years, Wal-Mart has tried to recast its image — tying bonuses of corporate officers to minority hiring and mentoring, putting employees through diversity training and using suppliers owned by minorities and women.

“We have an extraordinarily diverse base of customers and an extraordinarily diverse base of associates.” Mr. Rossiter said. “We understand and embrace that commitment.”