Times hit in job bias suit
THE GRAY LADY is looking a litttle pale, according to a lawsuitit filed Thursday in Manhattan Federal Court.
A pair of New York Times employees filed a class-action suit it against the “paper of record,” ,” claiming that CEO Mark Thompson and Meredith Levien, the comm pany’s chief revenue officer, have created a workplace that’s “become an environment rife with discrimination.”
“Unbeknownst to the world at large, not only does the Times have an ideal customer (young, white, wealthy), but also an ideal staffer (young, white, unencumbered with a family) to draw that purported ideal customer,” the suit says.
The lawsuit, filed at the U.S. District Court of Southern New York, claims that since Thompson became CEO in 2012, the paper’s advertising staff has been “systematically becoming increasingly younger and whiter.”
Plaintiffs Ernestine Grant, 62, and Marjorie Walker, 61, who are both African-American and work in the company’s advertising department, claim they have been passed over for promotions and that “younger white individuals” at the same level are paid more than they are.
Thompson, who was paid $8.7 million last year, and Levien, who earned $1.8 million, according to the suit, worked in concert to get rid of the mostly older, African-American staff in the advertising department, the suit says.
“Older advertising directors of color found themselves pushed out through buyouts, or outright terminated, but those vacancies were rapidly filled with younger, white individuals,” the lawsuit says.
Levien has made comments to the advertising staff that she wanted “fresh faces” of “people who look like the people we are selling to” in the department, the suit says.
Her comments were “shockingly rife with racially charged innuendos,” the plaintiffs claim.
The Times denied the mistreatment and discrimination and vows to fight the lawsuit.
“This lawsuit contains a series of recycled, scurrilous and unjustified attacks on both Mark Thompson and Meredith Levien,” Eileen Murphy, The Times’ head of communications, said in a statement. “It also completely distorts the realities of the work environment at the New York Times.
“The suit is entirely without merit and we intend to fight it vigorously in court,” Murphy added.
The lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages.