DHL pays $8.7 mln to settle EEOC claims that Black workers had harder jobs

Apr 25, 202416:55 UTC

DHL Express will pay $8.7 million to settle a long-running lawsuit by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission accusing the logistics giant's U.S. arm of assigning undesirable delivery routes and more heavy lifting to Black employees.

The settlement, which was approved by a federal judge in Chicago earlier this week and announced by the EEOC on Thursday, ends a race discrimination lawsuit filed by the commission in 2010. It also requires DHL to review and overhaul its policies for assigning work and handling internal worker complaints.

The EEOC claimed in the lawsuit that when white drivers objected to routes in neighborhoods with higher crime rates, they were handed off to Black employees who often witnessed crimes and sometimes became victims.

Black workers were also made to move large, heavy packages while their white counterparts sorted letters, the commission alleged.

DHL spokesman Robert Mintz said the company takes claims of discriminations seriously and has policies in place to address them, but denies wrongdoing in the EEOC lawsuit.

"At DHL, we are committed to creating an inclusive and respectful workplace where every employee is treated with dignity and fairness," Mintz said in an emailed statement. "We are also committed to ongoing learning and education that fosters a culture of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging throughout our organization."

EEOC officials in a statement said that segregating workers and giving them unequal assignments because of their race is just as illegal as paying them less or denying them promotions.

"The employer is telling Black workers that their lives and their safety concerns are valued less than the lives and concerns of their white coworkers," said Karla Gilbride, the commission's general counsel.

The settlement is the largest announced by the EEOC since March 2022, when Activision Blizzard agreed to pay $18 million in a lawsuit accusing the video game maker of sex discrimination and tolerating sexual harassment.

The payout in the DHL case will go to 83 Black workers who participated in the lawsuit, the EEOC said. Twenty of those workers intervened in the case and were represented by private counsel.

DHL also agreed to have a former EEOC commissioner, Leslie Silverman, review the company's internal complaint procedures and other policies and monitor the company's compliance with the settlement for four years.

The case is EEOC v. DHL Express (USA) Inc, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, No. 1:10-cv-06139.

For the EEOC: Jeanne Szromba

For the intervenor plaintiffs: Lee Winston of Winston Cooks

For DHL: Richard Lapp and Camille Olson of Seyfarth Shaw

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