Red Onion Chain Shaking Image of Racial Discrimination
After two years of lawsuits and government investigations into complaints of racial discrimination, the Red Onion restaurant chain is coming out from under the cloud that damaged business and its public image.
“The publicity has really hurt the Red Onion,” said Bill Kurlander, an attorney for the Carson-based chain of 13 restaurants. “But it looks like everything is falling into place.”
The chain has faced accusations in Orange, Riverside and Los Angeles counties that it excluded minorities, often by barring them at the door for arbitrary reasons of dress or allegedly inadequate identification.
But now, said Nathaniel Trives, a criminal justice professor at Cal State Los Angeles, “I would say the company has done a fairly good job in changing the attitudinal behavior of its staff.”
Trives was hired as a consultant by Red Onion in 1986 to manage a scholarship program for minorities as part of a two-year company plan to address discrimination complaints.
Tonight, the company will award those scholarships of $500 each to 15 women and minority students, two from Orange County. Ted R. Moreno and Emilia Chavez, both of Santa Ana and also students at Rancho Santiago College in Santa Ana, will be honored at the ceremony at the Red Onion Restaurant in Huntington Harbour.
It is the second year that the scholarships have been awarded. The recipients are chosen by a panel composed of members from the human relations commissions of Orange, Riverside and Los Angeles counties.
In addition to the scholarships, which Red Onion officials say will continue, Trives oversaw company efforts to find minority-owned restaurant suppliers, to recruit and train more minority employees and conducted “inter-cultural” training seminars for the firm’s 2,000 employees, including President Ron Newman.
“It’s a tough, tough situation when you have these kinds of complaints,” said Trives, who is black. “They had a very successful restaurant chain. When all these allegations came up, it was time to pause and notice what was going on.”
The discrimination complaints came to light in a series of newspaper articles in the spring of 1986. Former and current Red Onion employees spoke about bosses who instructed them to “clean up the crowd” when it became “too dark.”
Dozens of minority customers said they had been stopped at the doors of the Red Onion discos and told that the photographs on their driver’s licenses did not look like them or that they failed to meet the dress code.
Dozens of these people later filed complaints with local and state human rights organizations or sued the chain.
The company has since settled many of the lawsuits and privately apologized to some of the people. But publicly, chain officials deny that employees ever discriminated against minorities.
“Absolutely not,” said Gene Salas, vice president of the chain.
In 1986, under a settlement with the state Department of Fair Employment Housing, the Red Onion chain agreed to pay $500 each to 39 people who complained that they were barred because of racial and ethnic bias.
Last year, the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control briefly suspended liquor licenses at five of the chain’s restaurants for “active racial discrimination . . . (which) appears to be the result of a conspiracy from the corporate president.”
That same year, the chain also reportedly paid $240,000 to six Iranian immigrants who sued for racial discrimination. Neither side would discuss the amount of that settlement.
Discrimination complaints filed by 27 people in Orange County Superior Court now are in settlement discussions, according to attorneys for the Red Onion and the plaintiffs.
A handful of other discrimination cases still are pending in Riverside County and in federal district court, Kurlander said.
“Most, if not all, will be disposed of shortly,” he added.
Milton Grimes, a Santa Ana attorney representing three clients with discrimination complaints against Red Onion in Orange County Superior Court, gives the company credit for making changes.
“The Red Onion seems to have recognized that it was wrong in its discriminatory practices,” Grimes said. “They have tried to rectify the situation through minority scholarships. We appreciate those attempts, although it doesn’t take away the sting and hurt of those (who) already (were) discriminated against.”
Grimes also noted that changes happened after people took legal action.
“They didn’t have any choice but to rectify the situation,” he said.
