The Chicago Teamsters union has agreed to accept an $8.7 million settlement in a racial discrimination lawsuit filed 14 years ago against the global shipping company DHL Express, exposing racist practices reminiscent of the Jim Crow era.
The Teamsters announced the settlement in a statement on April 24.
The federal legal action, brought with the help of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in September 2010, claimed DHL singled out Black Teamsters in Chicago by giving them worse job assignments compared to white employees.
The suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleged that drivers and dockworkers with Teamsters Local 705 were assigned their job roles at DHL based on race, which violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
For five years until they filed the suit in 2010, Black workers documented dozens of incidents in which they were given less desirable, more difficult, and more dangerous route and dock assignments than their white counterparts.
At the same time, Black drivers said they were relegated to routes in predominately Black neighborhoods while steering the white drivers to areas populated mostly by white people.
An investigation led by Chicago District Director John Rowe supported the claims in EEOC v. DHL Express (USA), Inc.
“While this may not have been obvious to employees at first, over time, a pattern of segregation emerged,” Rowe concluded as part of the EEOC’s administrative investigation, leading to the federal action.
Previously, John Hendrickson, the EEOC’s regional attorney in Chicago, blasted DHL for continuing segregationist practices that have been outlawed in the United States for decades in a news release.
“Any employer who gives different work assignments to employees simply because of the color of their skin, sends a message to all of its employees that it is by no means colorblind,” Hendrickson. “The concept of ‘separate but equal’ has long since been rejected. It has absolutely no place on the job. Everyone should understand that federal law — Title VII — expressly forbids the segregation of employees. In this case, as with all of our other cases, the EEOC is looking to ensure that all employees can work in an environment free of discrimination.”
The case underscores the enduring legacy of discriminatory practices from the Jim Crow era, demonstrating how racism can echo and persist in contemporary society while often hidden behind the walls of large corporations.
After slavery, discriminatory practices were enshrined in laws and national customs that enforced racial segregation and marginalized Black people following their liberation.
These practices included segregated public facilities such as schools, transportation, and restaurants, as well as voter suppression tactics like poll taxes and literacy tests; while overt discrimination extended to employment opportunities, with policies designed specifically to restrict wealth and opportunities for Black people.
Black Americans were also subjected to violence and intimidation, including lynchings and other forms of racial violence, which were often carried out with impunity and continue to serve as a stark reminder of the enduring impact of systemic racism in American society.
DHL recently agreed to a settlement and entered into a consent decree with the federal government, while an EEOC monitor has been appointed to ensure that DHL pays the fine and takes other actions to curtail any further discrimination at the company.
“The outcome of this lawsuit was more than a decade in the making, but our members stayed the course and fought for their rights,” said Juan Campos, secretary-treasurer of Local 705 and Teamsters International vice president at large in a statement. “DHL’s racist behavior is completely unacceptable. I am proud of our rank-and-file Teamsters for fighting for what is right and holding this company accountable for its disgusting conduct.”
The Teamsters union represents more than 6,000 DHL workers across the country.
Founded in 1969, the company reportedly has a deep history of flouting labor laws and ignoring employee rights.
According to the lawsuit, at DHL’s main hub in Cincinnati, supervisors ran the operation like a prison and referred to workers as “inmates.”
In 2022, a white supervisor physically attacked a Black worker, but the company took no action and allowed the violent offender to keep his job.
“The mistreatment of Chicago Teamsters lays bare DHL’s indifference to human rights and basic laws in the U.S.,” said Bill Hamilton, Director of the Teamsters Express Division and Teamsters Eastern Region International Vice President. “DHL is an unethical corporation that has no respect for the workers who make its executives so rich.”
Established in 1903, the Teamsters is an international labor union that represents 1.3 million workers across the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico.
