Dive Brief:
- Cargill will pay $2.2 million to settle Department of Labor charges that it engaged in discriminatory hiring practices at some of its meat-processing facilities.
- Some 3,000 rejected applicants will receive back pay, and some 350 jobs will be made available to them as they open.
- The Labor Department alleged that discrimination was widespread at the country's largest privately held company. Female applicants faced bias in some locations; minority applicants faced bias in two locations; and white applicants were discriminated against in one location.
Dive Insight:
Cargill has admitted no wrongdoing in this case. The company instead says that the Labor Department's charges are "unfounded and without merit." The agribusiness giant says it is settling the case to avoid the costs and hassles of lengthy legal action.
In addition, Cargill has taken a sort of we're-the-victims-here, anti-government stance in which the company complains about quotas, "mathematical models," and an "absence of evidence."
We're quite sure that the bureaucrats-are-evil defense will win Cargill some sympathy in much of America. And that's fine. We tend to dislike government overseers too.
But we tend to loathe the victim mentality. Perhaps there really is some sort of crazed, math-model wielding monster of liberalism and regulation running amok through American business. But we haven't seen him.