Ad Agencies Face Discrimination Complaints
A prominent employment and labor lawyer is working on taking the anti-discrimination fight to the advertising industry in a class action suit targeting big movers in this field.
Reports from Advertising Age reveal that Cyrus Mehri of the law firm Mehri and Skalet is filing charges with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against numerous ad industries including those associated with holding companies Interpublic Group of Cos., WPP, Publicis Groupe and Omnicom Group as part of a “Madison Avenue Project” where Mehri and the NAACP found evidence of “pervasive” racial discrimination in the ad world.
While the EEOC has to take time to investigate charges, the general effort seems to be moving forward, at least according to Mr. Mehri who told Advertising Age that “the wheels are moving” on a broad class action suit.
Mehri’s firm previously brought a class action suit against giant oil company Texaco in which audio-taped statements by executives contributed to a successful finding for the employees who claimed discrimination there. Mehri has also started other high profile class actions suits regarding discrimination by individual employers.
Some of those in the ad industry who are following the current effort claim that it will be harder to get a judgment against ad companies where labor policies are much less straightforward.
The Madison Avenue Project and its results illustrate how groups of workers can successfully take on their employers over job discrimination issues and how an entire industry can be affected.
In this case, it seems likely that the suit will drive some careful discussions over traditional policies and tendencies of advertising companies where changing demographics influence the way executives think. This case will also set precedent for employment and labor lawyers who want to help workers build a future case against an employer where the problem is bigger than one single person or one specific company.
Monheit is the managing lawyer at Monheit Law, outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has practiced law since 1989. Michael Monheit was the managing attorney of the law offices of Herbert Monheit — now Silverman and Fodera — a firm founded by... Michael Monheit→
