Coca-Cola Creates Diversity Council

Jet, June 14, 1999

Coca-Cola Co. Chairman and CEO M. Douglas Ivester recently announced the formation of a council to work on diversifying its staff.

Heading the new council will be Carl Ware, 55, the highest ranking Black at Coca-Cola who is the president of the company's Africa unit, and Jack Stahl, senior vice president and head of the North America Group.

The new council comes on the heels of a racial discrimination lawsuit against the Atlanta-based company.

Ivester sent an e-mail memo to employees saying: "Ours is an environment where all people advance based simply on their ability and their performance. This focus on merit means that there must be and will be no room for discrimination in any form or of any kind against any employee."

He also said that the Diversity Advisory Council will help "assure that we are able to achieve our different, better and special standard and to maximize the benefits of diversity in our work force."

Ivester has denied that the company discriminates. But he said in the e-mail that he also plans to hold periodic meetings with small groups of employees to "increase my own efforts to open the lines of communication with all constituencies."

One former and three current Black salaried employees sued Coke a couple of months ago, claiming that the company discriminated against Black employees in pay, promotions, performance evaluations and terminations.

They currently are seeking class-action status, which would add as plaintiffs all 1,500 salaried Black employees who work for the company nationwide.

"We welcome the establishment of the diversity council," said Cyrus Mehri, a Washington attorney for the plaintiffs. "However, it should have been established four years ago, and it will not be fully effective without input from the plaintiffs and the other salaried Black employees."

Ware told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he and three other Black executives at Coke met in 1995 and made recommendations on improving opportunities for Blacks, at the request of the then-president Ivester.