Eli Lilly & Co. sued for discriminatory actions

Ken Kusmer

INDIANAPOLIS — A racial discrimination lawsuit alleges Eli Lilly & Co. paid black employees less than their white peers, passed them over for promotions and subjected them to harassment such as epithets.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court also claims a Lilly human resources staffer told a complaining female employee that her managers on the manufacturing side considered her previous corporate supervisors to be too accepting of blacks and that they were no longer in a position to address her concerns.

“It’s like the plantation, unfortunately, at the manufacturing site. It’s blatant discrimination,” Cassandra Welch said last week, the day after the lawsuit was filed. Lilly fired her in mid-2004 for allegedly falsifying e-mails in an unrelated financial dispute with another employee of the Indianapolis-based drug company.

Welch, two other former employees and a current one are named as plaintiffs in the complaint, which seeks class-action status on behalf of more than 1,000 black employees whom attorneys said might have faced the same kinds of discrimination since August 2003. It seeks unspecified damages, lost compensation and an order enjoining Lilly against future discrimination.

Each of the four plaintiffs also have complaints pending with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the lawsuit said.

Lilly spokeswoman Carla Cox said the company was withholding comment on the specific allegations as officials had not yet reviewed the lawsuit.

“It’s certainly part of our company fabric to treat people fairly and with respect,” Cox said.

More than 20 present and former Lilly employees have contacted the plaintiffs’ lawyers, Joshua and David Rose of Washington, D.C., about possible representation in the case, Joshua Rose said.

“Lilly managers tend to groom white employees for promotion and bonuses more effectively, more rapidly and more often than their African American peers,” the attorneys, who specialize in employment law, said in a written statement.

Welch, 45, now a northern Virginia-based business consultant, said she began at Lilly in 1992 as a production worker earning an hourly wage, transferred to finance and, after obtaining her bachelor’s degree in accounting and information technology, was promoted to a salaried position in 2000.

The lawsuit alleges she was paid at a grade lower than her responsibilities merited and was part of a team whose white male members received bonuses, merit awards and promotions that were denied to her.

“I have to say the executives and Lilly, in terms of (diversity) strategy and policy, has one of the best in the industry,” Welch said in a telephone interview. However, she said managers only went through the motions with those policies. “A policy only is as good as it’s implemented. It was more of a check-the-box exercise.”

Racist comments by and among white workers against black employees and other blacks were common in a manufacturing department where Welch worked, the lawsuit said.

“On one occasion, Welch found a dark colored doll with a noose around its neck on her desk,” the lawsuit said.

When her complaints about discrimination went nowhere with her department managers, she went to human resources, where a representative told her manufacturing managers considered corporate officials to be too accepting of blacks, referring to them with a hostile slang term, the lawsuit said.

Also named as plaintiffs are a current sales representative, Sheryl A. Davis of Memphis, Tenn., and two former sales reps, Jarmaine Bromell of Philadelphia and Raynard Tyson of North Carolina. They allege they were paid less than their white peers and had less opportunities for bonuses and promotions.

Bromell and Tyson also allege that after they complained of discrimination, Lilly managers retaliated by making their sales quotas more difficult to attain and encouraging them, directly or indirectly, to leave the company.

(Associated Press)