Pepsi Beverages Co. is one of the most recent high-profile corporations which was caught engaging in racial discrimination. Racial discrimination, which is negative or unfair treatment on the basis of an employee's race, is present in both small companies and multinational corporations. Positive changes in discriminatory practices can be created when employment law attorneys hold corporations accountable for discriminatory hiring practices.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against the soft drink company for discriminatory hiring practices which impacted around 300 black applicants across the country. The applicants will split the settlement money but their identities were not disclosed so it is unclear how many are from New Orleans.

Failure to hire claims are among the most difficult types of discrimination claims to bring because there are a variety of factors that influence the hiring process. Generally an applicant must show that he or she was bypassed for a less qualified candidate outside of their protected group. Additionally, if a hiring manager is part of the applicant's protected group, it makes it much harder to prove that discriminatory hiring practices were afoot.

For example, if a qualified black candidate was bypassed for a position but one or more less qualified white candidates were hired, then the black candidate may have a failure to hire claim. The claim is less likely to succeed however if the hiring manager is black or if the company hires several other black candidates for similar positions.

We will discuss further details of the Pepsi discrimination case in our next post.

Source: Star Tribune, "Bottler to pay $3.1M in racial bias case," Dee DePass, Jan. 11, 2012