Abercrombie Accused of Job Bias
June 27, 2003
Abercrombie & Fitch, the clothing retailer that promotes a “casual classic American lifestyle,” has been hit with an employment discrimination lawsuit accusing it of cultivating an overwhelmingly white sales force.
The lawsuit, filed June 16 by nine Hispanic and Asian Pacific American plaintiffs, alleges that Abercrombie discriminates against blacks, Hispanics and APAs with a corporate policy that requires salespeople to exhibit an all-white “A & F look.”
The company promotes the policy by recruiting from overwhelmingly white fraternities and sororities and producing catalogs and store promotional materials featuring mostly white models, according to the lawsuit.
When it does hire minorities, the company channels them to stock room and overnight jobs, says the lawsuit, which seeks certification as a class action.
“If you look at the material they put out, they are cultivating an all-white look,” said Thomas Saenz, vice president of litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs. “It is difficult to understand why, given that their target age demographic is even more heavily minority than the rest of the population, they would choose to do this.”
The New Albany, Ohio-based company, which targets college students with its upscale casual clothing, has about 600 stores and about 22,000 employees nationwide.
Abercrombie has been accused of racial insensitivity in the past. Last spring, following complaints from APA groups, it removed from stores a line of T-shirts that showed two slant-eyed men in conical hats with the slogan “Wong Brothers Laundry Service — Two Wongs Can Make it White.”
Spokesman Tom Lennox said Abercrombie has not received a copy of this most recent lawsuit and declined to comment on its specifics, but said the company does not discriminate.
One of the plaintiffs, Anthony Ocampo, a Filipino American who recently graduated from Stanford University, said he re-applied for a job at a store in Glendale, Calif. where he’d previously worked.
After speaking with a manager, a salesperson told him, “We’re sorry, but we can’t rehire you because there’s already too many Filipinos working here,” said Ocampo, 21.
“I was pretty appalled and for a good amount of time I was just real angry,” Ocampo said.
Another plaintiff, Angeline Wu, a Chinese American, alleges she was terminated from a store in Costa Mesa, Calif. after a manager pointed at a poster of a blond-haired, blue-eyed male model and said the store needed more staff members with a similar appearance.
“It shouldn’t be happening, especially in this day,” Wu said. “We’ve had the civil rights movement in the past and this is outrageous. It shouldn’t be happening.”
— Deborah Kong
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