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Report

21 Jan 2019

Author:
Philip Mattera, Good Jobs First

USA: Report analyses payments made by corporations in discrimination or harassment lawsuits since 2000

"Big Business Bias: Employment Discrimination and Sexual Harassment at Large Corporations", January 2019

A detailed examination of federal and state court records shows that the vast majority of large corporations throughout the U.S. economy...have made payments to plaintiffs in at least one employment discrimination or harassment lawsuit since the beginning of 2000.

These include individual and class action cases alleging discrimination based on gender, race, national origin, age, or disability as well as sexual or racial harassment...

Figuring out how to eliminate racism, sexism and other forms of bias in the workplace is a difficult task. Part of the solution is to make sure that instances of abuse are not kept secret.

The #MeToo movement’s demand to end non-disclosure agreements and mandatory arbitration of sexual harassment complaints would move more cases into public court proceedings, yet many of those lawsuits will end up being resolved through out-of-court settlements whose terms are not revealed.

While it may not be realistic to demand an end to the use of confidential court settlements, large corporations should do more to disclose the full extent to which they are targeted in discrimination and harassment lawsuits.

This could be done by requiring publicly traded companies to reveal in their annual Securities and Exchange Commission 10-K filings how many cases have been led against them, how those cases were resolved, and how much they paid out in aggregate damages and settlements. e same requirement could be imposed on large federal contractors that are not publicly traded...

[Refers to Coca-Cola, Novartis, Morgan Stanley, Abercrombie & Fitch and so on]