Lucky Stores Agrees to Settle Sex Bias Suit : Workplace: Chain will pay nearly $108 million for alleged discrimination against women, but denies wrongdoing.
In one of the largest monetary settlements of a sex discrimination lawsuit ever, Lucky Stores has agreed to pay close to $108 million to end a class action filed by a group of female employees who worked in the grocery chain’s Northern California stores.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys, who announced the agreement Thursday, said the settlement should reverberate throughout the supermarket industry, which has faced several sex discrimination suits in recent years.
The settlement, which is expected to provide some monetary benefit to about 14,000 of 20,000 women initially included in the action, comes more than a year after U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel found Lucky guilty of placing women in poorly paying jobs and denying them advancement opportunities.
In her 193-page ruling in August, 1992, Patel said that “sex discrimination was a standard operating procedure” at Lucky. The court, which was preparing to set damages, must approve the settlement.
In a statement Thursday, Lucky said it “vigorously defended its equal-employment opportunity policies throughout the lawsuit and denies any violation of civil rights laws.”
Still, as part of the settlement, Lucky said it signed a consent decree obligating it to set up programs to train women for management jobs. The settlement includes funding for the program.
David McAdam, a Lucky spokesman, said the grocery chain has spent more than $7 million on training programs for women since Patel’s 1992 ruling. “We are completely committed to meeting the goals of the consent decree,” he said.
The $108 million includes $74.25 million in payments to the plaintiffs, said Brad Seligman, their lead attorney Most will receive about $5,000 apiece. Some plaintiffs may get as much as $50,000, depending on their work circumstances, he said.
Lucky, a subsidiary of Salt Lake City-based American Stores Co., said the settlement will have no material effect on the company.
*
Reba Barber-Money, 36, one of the named plaintiffs who spoke at the press conference when the settlement was announced by the plaintiffs’ Oakland law firm, Saperstein, Mayeda & Goldstein, said filing the suit in 1984 was well worth the effort.
When she and other Lucky Stores workers brought the suit, only 3% of women held management jobs, she said.
Barber-Money said she started at Lucky as a bagger in 1979, and when she asked for promotions, managers “laughed in my face.”
*
Mari Mayeda, a Saperstein, Mayeda & Goldstein partner, said that “sex discrimination is not a problem within just one store; it’s an industrywide problem.”
The firm has handled four sex discrimination suits against grocers since 1986, winning $143 million in damages, including the Lucky settlement, the firm said.
Other lawyers who defend employers in their disputes with employees said the settlement should be a warning to management.
“I think every employer in the industry who does not have training programs in place runs the risk of similar lawsuits,” said Doug Farmer, an attorney at Corbett & Kane, a San Francisco law firm representing management in labor and employment matters.
“The supermarket industry is a target at this point,” he said. “Employers in the industry need to have programs in place and promotional policies based on objective criteria.”
