Zara, the Brand That Brought You Swastika-Stamped Handbags, Faces $40 Million Anti-Semitism Lawsuit
Zara, the fast-fashion retailer that brought you a children’s t-shirt that looks like a concentration camp uniform and a handbag decorated with swastikas, is facing a $40 million discrimination lawsuit. Three employees are alleging nine causes of action: according to Women’s Wear Daily, the lawsuit makes “claims on racial discrimination, in particular anti-Semitism. It is also alleging pay discrimination and retaliation.”
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday by Zara’s former general counsel, Ian Jack Miller, and lists the U.S. country manager, and Zara USA’s director of expansion for North and South American, Moises Costas Rodriguez, as the other defendants. Miller started working at Zara in January 2008 and was fired in March of this year.
Miller is Jewish and alleges the discrimination he experienced was particularly harsh as a result. Though upper management didn’t know about Miller’s faith until he’d been at Zara for five years, they routinely called Jewish landlords and real estate developers with whom they worked “los judios” (Spanish for “the Jews”), whined that it was trying to work with “those people,” and generally mocked them. Once Miller’s religion came to light, he found himself cut out of crucial meetings and email chains; his annual pay raises were cut from over 15 percent to three percent.
Miller alleges that employees are favored if they are “straight, Spanish and Christian.” Spanish employees allegedly enjoyed greater job security and higher pay raises, he claims. He also alleges that he was fired the day after his legal counsel sent a letter to Zara detailing his complaints.
From Fashionista:
The lawsuits claims are specific, lewd and no doubt embarrassing to many current and former employees. The lawsuit describes a corporate culture where visits to prostitutes are a normal part of business trips and a heterosexual lifestyle is endorsed. Miller says that former Zara USA CEO Moises Costas Rodriguez bragged about the size of his penis and having sexual relations with five female subordinates, including a director of human resources, and that he sent an email to Miller highlighting language that marriage is an institution “sanctified between a man and a woman.” The suit claims that another Zara executive, Francesc Fernandez Claramunt, sent Miller’s partner, Michael Mayberry, a pornographic image of an erect and tattooed penis and that Fernandez had been trying to persuade Miller to get such a tattoo.
It wasn’t just Miller who was the alleged target of Zara’s prejudice: emails that regularly circulated among senior management reportedly contained pictures of Michelle and Barack Obama, the former serving fried chicken, the latter on an Aunt Jemima box shining shoes and in a Ku Klux Klan hood holding a Confederate flag.
