Sprint Will Pay $558K to Settle US Labor Dept.'s Bias Claims
The conciliation agreement was not an admission by Sprint of any violation, and there has been no adjudication that Sprint violated any laws.
September 16, 2019 at 12:36 PM
3 minute read
Sprint Corp. has agreed to pay $558,650 to resolve claims from the U.S. Labor Department that the telecommunications company's hiring practices discriminated against African American and female applicants for positions at a now-shuttered facility in Fort Worth, Texas.
The financial agreement between Sprint and the Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, or OFCCP, includes compensation for back pay and interest to eligible class members. The agreement, part of a regulatory investigation and not a court case, was signed in late August.
"OFCCP's analysis of the Sprint Fort Worth facility's hiring process and selection procedures revealed statistically significant differences in hiring rates between similarly qualified male and female applicants, and between similarly qualified white and black or African American applicants," according to the settlement documents.
The conciliation agreement was not an admission by Sprint of any violation, and there has been no adjudication that Sprint violated any laws. The conciliation agreement was signed by the head of Sprint's human resources department. Sprint was represented by the workplace compliance firm NT Lakis in Washington.
"In the interest of bringing this longstanding review to rest, Sprint agreed to the settlement to resolve this matter," a Sprint spokesperson said Monday in an email.
The Sprint job positions focused on technical support and advanced technical support. Sprint's hiring practices, according to the Labor Department, "negatively impacted" female and black candidates.
The Labor Department's federal contract office regularly conducts audits to ensure companies that have contracts with the federal government are complying with federal civil rights laws. The review period at the Sprint facility was March 2011 to March 2013. The conciliation agreement said the facility in question, in Fort Worth, has been closed since November 2014.
The Labor Department has signed 21 financial conciliation agreements this year with companies including Cintas Corporation, Coca Cola Refreshment, Medtronic Inc., Sodexo Inc. and US Foods Inc.
Several Obama-era Labor Department contract-compliance cases against U.S. companies remain pending. Lawyers for Oracle Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are fighting claims their hiring practices were discriminatory.
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