Amazon hit with 5 racial and gender bias lawsuits

Amazon is facing lawsuits from five women who accuse the company of both racial and gender bias.

The women have accused the e-commerce giant of favouring men over women in career growth, allowing supervisors to belittle them, and retaliating after they complained, according to a report by Reuters.

Two of the claimants are black, one is Latina, one is Asian-American, and one is white. They filed the lawsuits across federal courts in Arizona, California, Delaware and Seattle.

An Amazon spokesman told the news agency that the company has found no evidence to support the allegations. They said that the business doesn’t allow discrimination or harassment and supports a “diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture.”

The lawsuits were filed by Wigdor law firm, which represented a Black manager at Amazon Web Services who sued the company in March over alleged systemic discrimination.

The new claimants include Cindy Warner, a gay executive who said a male manager openly called her a "bitch," an "idiot" and a "nobody," and that Amazon terminated her job after learning she had hired a lawyer.

Pearl Thomas, a black woman who said that a human resources employee downplayed concerns about her treatment by saying she was upset by current events and that "my name is not Derek Chauvin," the white Minneapolis police officer who was convicted of murdering George Floyd, Reuters reported.

An Amazon spokesperson said: “We are conducting thorough investigations for each of these unrelated cases, as we do with any reported incidents, and we have found no evidence to support the allegations. Amazon works hard to foster a diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture. We do not tolerate discrimination or harassment in any form, and employees are encouraged to raise concerns to any member of management or through an anonymous ethics hotline with no risk of retaliation.”

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