BJ's wholesale club to pay $100,000 in discrimination suit

Jet, May 5, 2008 by Marti Parham

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently announced that BJ's Wholesale Club will have to pay $100,000 to settle a discrimination lawsuit involving its store in Homestead, FL.

The EEOC filed suit in U.S. District Court in South Florida, charging a hostile workplace was created when a BJ manager subjected a Puerto Rican employee and a Black employee to offensive slurs based on race and national origin, according to the South Florida Business Journal. The manager was a Cuban-American.

BJ's, based in Natick, MA, has approximately 177 wholesale clubs nationwide, including 13 in South Florida.

The case was resolved by a court-ordered consent decree, under which BJ's will pay $100,000 to the two victims. The wholesale clubs will adopt a new anti-harassment policy. Management and other employees will also be trained on federal anti-discrimination statutes. The company must also post a notice of the resolution of the lawsuit and report all discrimination complaints to the EEOC.