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.
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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