FedEx Agrees to Pay $3 Million to Settle a Discrimination Case

Excerpt from an article in

The New York Times

Thursday, March 22, 2012

FedEx Agrees to Pay $3 Million to Settle a Discrimination Case

 By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

The United States Department of Labor has reached a $3 million settlement with the ground delivery unit of FedEx to resolve allegations that the company discriminated against 21,635 job seekers at two dozen FedEx facilities in 15 states.

The Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs reached the agreement with FedEx Ground Package Systems after saying that it had found evidence of discrimination in hiring on the basis of sex, race and national origin. The office monitors employment practices at the nation’s 200,000 federal contractors, which employ roughly a fourth of the nation’s work force.

Under the settlement, department officials said Wednesday, FedEx has agreed to make wide-ranging changes to correct any discriminatory hiring practices and to extend job offers to 1,703 of the people rejected for jobs as part-time package handlers as those positions become available.

 Patricia A. Shiu, director of the contract compliance office, said it was her office’s largest settlement since 2004, when it reached a $5.5 million resolution with Wachovia after finding that more than 2,000 of the bank’s female workers had been underpaid.

“When you do business with the government, we expect you to do the right thing,” said Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis in a statement. “That includes giving all Americans an equal shot at a good job. It’s about more than just the law — diversity is smart for business.”

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