Expansion, hiring continues despite bias lawsuits - Brief Article

Home Deopt proud of employment record

ATLANTA -- A series of employee-related lawsuits against Home Depot has not curtailed the home improvement retailer's opening of new stores and its continued effort to hire people to staff them.

Dealing with the latest in a string of legal actions alleging discrimination, Home Depot is maintaining its current policies regarding hiring, promotion, job placement, training and compensation.

"The company is proud of its employment record in treating people fairly," Home Depot Jerry Shields said.

But, at its annual shareholders meeting last month, a proposal to require Home Depot to release statistics about the employment of women and minorities was rejected by a resounding vote. This was the third-straight year in which the proposal -- which asks for detailed information on the makeup of the retailer's now 232,000-employee work force -- was defeated.

The measure has been turned back even as over the past five years Home Depot has faced repeated lawsuits from former or current employees who claim they are victims of discrimination at the hands of an employer that promotes workers who are white and/or male over their qualified black and/or female counterparts.

In 1998, the retailer settled a $65 million class-action discrimination suit filed on behalf of 25,000 female workers in 10 Western states. The year before, Depot agreed to pay $700,000 in a sexual discrimination suit in Louisiana.

In February, five current and former employees sued Home Depot, claiming racial discrimination in promotions, performance evaluations and pay at an Austell, Ga., store.

That suit was preceded by one filed in January by a dozen current and former Depot employees who alleged racial discrimination against black workers at the Southfield, Mich., store in suburban Detroit. They are asking for $1.12 billion in damages. Three claim they were fired after making complaints to the Michigan Department of Civil Rights.

Last month, the retailer settled a discrimination complaint from that department after the agency launched an investigation upon receiving complaints from the plaintiffs and other Southfield employees.

Without admitting wrongdoing, Home Depot met with the civil rights department to resolve the allegations. The details of the settlement were kept confidential, but the state said it would monitor Home Depot stores around Dotroit for two years and keep its complaint against the retailer open should Depot not comply with the terms.

In the latest round of. legal action, last month five former Home Depot employees filed a $1.5 million suit against the retailer, claiming discrimination against black workers at two stores in southeast Florida. The employees said they were paid less, given poor performance evaluations and denied promotion because of their race. Four of the former workers were cashiers at a Home Depot in Pompano Beach for part of 1997; the other worked as a cashier for eight years at a Deerfield Beach store.

Despite the law suits, the company maintains it's committed to fair hiring practices and regularly reviews its policies. It notes that it spends thousands of dollars each year to attract, train and maintain employees and keep up with industry standards for promotion and job placement. Shields said Home Depot has an average 3.5 percent annual employee turnover in its stores and the home improvement giant plans to hire an additional 200,000 employees by 2003.

According to its 1999 annual Social Responsibility Report, the latest information available at press time, minorities made up 25 percent of Home Depot's work force, up from 24 percent in 1998 arid 23 percent in 1997. The report also stated that, in certain managerial and professional positions, women and minorities were moving up the ranks at the same or faster rate than the retailer's chain-wide average.

Since settling, two gender discrimination suits for $104 million two years ago, Home Depot has created a new vp position in charge of value initiative and has installed job application kiosks in its stores to help ensure a state-of-the-art job posting and application process.

At the store level, human resources and store managers are responsible for enforcing the company's employment policies.

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