Ware put together the Ware report. He took it
to Doug Ivester and he did nothing with it.”
At that time (in 1995), Ivester was president
of Coca-Cola, and he became CEO and chairman from 1997 to 1999. In 1995, Ware was
president of the company’s African-operations
group, when he spotlighted the lack of senior-level promotions among black employees. His
findings and concerns were ignored. “Unless
you have systems in place to check bias, you
are going to have discriminatory outcomes,”
says Mehri.
Ware now is retired after working for 32
years at Coca-Cola. He serves on the board of
Clark Atlanta University. After being contacted
through his affiliation at Clark Atlanta, Ware
had a Coca-Cola public-relations staffer return
DiversityInc’s calls to say “his comments would
be prehistoric at this time.”
The Tumultuous Road
to Recovery
“It took a year or two, but Coke went from
being a laggard to a leader,” says Mehri. Ivester
became CEO in 1997. Only months after the
lawsuit was filed in 1999, he demoted Ware,
who was the highest-ranking black executive at
the time. Ivester’s decision to fight the discrimination case instead of settling it quickly fueled
the fire for more
lawsuits against
the company.
High-profile
black politicians
and attorneys
got involved,
and with the
help of former
employees and
civil-rights
groups, they
threatened boycotts and held
marches.
Ingrid Saunders
Jones, director of corporate
external affairs, senior vice president of The Coca-Cola Co. and
chairperson of The Coca-Cola
Foundation. “I’m a teacher by
training. I had mentors who
advised me to take the job at
Coke. Maynard Jackson said to
me, ‘There is no better place to
work than The Coca-Cola Co. If
you are going to take a risk,
take this one.’”
Renowned
attorneys Willie
Gary and
Johnnie Cochran
solicited a separate group of
black employees
to attempt a lawsuit for $1 billion, which
eventually
became part of
the initial class-action lawsuit.
In December 1999, Ivester suddenly
gotten this person fired. The
company had called in outside
counselors to counsel the
whole department about the
situation. After all of this, I
just wanted to be removed
from that group. The whole
[lawsuit] could have been
avoided.”
“The day I made the decision that I had to go on the
outside, I went to our senior
vice president of human
resources, a black woman …
and she made this comment to
me that kind of set this whole
thing in motion,” says Ingram.
After leaving countless messages for this human-resource
manager, Ingram left a pivotal
message that she would have
to “seek help outside” if no
one from the Coca-Cola
human-resource office would
respond to her request to
switch departments.
“Finally, she responded to
me and she was irate. She told
me that ‘You or no one else
threatens me or The Coca-Cola
Co. If you feel you need to get
help from the outside, then get
help from the outside.’”
Ingram, left to no other
recourse, sought the counsel
of Cyrus Mehri, the attorney
who represented employees at
Texaco in the landmark $176-
million discrimination case.
In 1999, the Coca-Cola case
went to trial. Ingram joined
forces with three other black
employees to successfully lead
what became Ingram, et al v.
The Coca-Cola Company. At
first, Coca-Cola denied the
claims, hoping that its reputation would safeguard the company from being found guilty.
It didn’t.
Coca-Cola was charged with
engaging “in a pattern and
practice of race discrimination
in promotions, compensation
and performance evaluations
and that the company’s
employment policies and practices had a disparate impact on
African-American employees.”
