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Coca Cola Racial Discrimination

1284 Words6 Pages
Under the U.S civil Rights Act, in April of 1999 four current and former African-American employees of Coca-Cola filed a class action lawsuit alleging race discrimination. Twenty-two hundred similarly situated African-American colleagues and the Plaintiffs, on behalf of themselves, alleged that they had suffered discrimination in performance evaluations, promotions and pay (Case Profile: Coca-Cola Lawsuit, n.d.). The Caucasian employee’s median salary was about one-third greater than that of their African-American counterparts was showed in the statistics provided by the plaintiffs. Moreover, to keep them from rising to top positions within the company, they also claimed that Coca-Cola had glass-wall and glass ceiling policies in place. The Plaintiffs argued that Coca-Cola neglected to counteract and remedy this discrimination (Case Profile: Coca-Cola Lawsuit n.d.).
Justification for Problem Definition
A barrier to career advancement is a glass ceiling. At pay grade eleven only 7.8 percent where African-American, at Coca-Cola out of the five hundred employees in 1998. The number drops furthermore and only 1.5 percent of pay grade fifteen employees and 4.4 percent of more than one hundred employees at pay grade fourteen (Lovel, 2003). African-Americans in senior positions are concentrated in non-revenue generating areas and less powerful which was noted by plaintiffs in terms of glass walls. Over half of the African-American senior management officials were accounted by the
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