Blacks get $80 million settlement in bias lawsuit against food service supplier

Jet, May 16, 2005

Sodexho Inc., a food service company, has agreed to pay $80 million to settle a lawsuit brought by thousands of Black employees who charged that they were routinely barred from promotions and segregated within the company.

The agreement, one of the biggest race-related job bias settlements in years, has detailed provisions for increasing diversity at the Maryland-based company, including promotion incentives, monitoring and training.

The company said in a statement that it agreed to resolve the litigation in order to avoid protracting the case, which was set for jury selection in federal district court in Washington. It admitted no wrongdoing.

The case was filed in March 2001 against the company's corporate predecessor, Sodexho Marriott Services, Inc., after mid-level Black managers said they realized nearly all had been denied promotions into upper management, while less-qualified counterparts rose through the company.

The settlement will mean payouts to 10 lead plaintiffs and as many as 3,000 other Black salaried workers who worked at the company between 1998 and 2004, according to the settlement decree.

The compensation amounts will depend on each person's tenure with the company: Those hired after 2001 will receive $2,000 each and those hired before that will get $492 for each month of employment at Sodexho up to a maximum of 120 months. The lead plaintiffs will also receive $120,000 each.

The cash payouts will come in addition to money spent to set up monitoring, training and other diversity initiatives, said Leslie Aun, a company spokeswoman.

Of the company's 100,000-plus North American employees in 2004, about 1 in 8 managers was Black, Aun said. She said there are no figures available for upper management, but court documents said that, in 2000, Blacks held 18 out of 700 upper management jobs and none of the 188 top corporate jobs.

In addition, plaintiffs alleged that so-called Black accounts--at historically Black colleges and universities, for example--were overwhelmingly staffed with Black employees and managers, who were rarely promoted outside of those accounts.

Sodexho Inc., headquartered in Gaithersburg, MD, is the North American subsidiary of the France-based Sodexho Alliance. It provides food services to more than 6,000 businesses and organizations, including hospitals, cruise ships and universities. It's also the official supplier for the U.S. Marine Corps. Last year, the company had $6 billion in sales.