N. California Safeway Stores Settle Sex-Discrimination Suit for $5 Million

A sex-discrimination suit against Safeway’s 216 Northern California stores has been settled for $5 million, Safeway and lawyers for a group of women announced Friday.

The settlement also requires Safeway to set goals for increasing the number of female managers and to change the salary structure that encouraged women to stay in predominantly female departments, said attorney Jack Lee.

The settlement is subject to a federal judge’s approval.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Sacramento in 1991, covers about 20,000 women who have worked for Safeway at some time since January, 1989. But Lee said the money in the settlement would be divided among a smaller number, those who had worked in certain jobs and claimed to have been harmed by the policies challenged in the suit. The five women who filed the suit will get $25,000 each, Lee said.