Retail Employee Lawsuits - Is AutoZone Employee Lawsuit An Example of Growing Religious Discrimination, Bad Employer Workplace Practices, or Convenient Employee Legal Strategy? (AZO, ANF)
Oct. 5, 2010: 
A retail employee of the AutoZone (AZO) retail chain filed a lawsuit last week claiming that he became the victim of workplace discrimination after he converted to Sikhism and began wearing a turban to work. While this may or may not be the latest example of Sikhs seeking justice and equality in a Muslim-phobic society, it is definitely the latest example of retail employees seeking retribution for bad employment and workplace practices from some of the largest employers in the U.S. retail industry.
Is it that retail employment and management practices are getting worse, retail employees are getting braver, or that the number of employer-employee lawsuits in the U.S. retail industry are not more plentiful, just more widely reported?
It's probably a combination of all three conditions that is the driving force behind the high profile retail employee grievances which have turned into legal actions, court filings, individual lawsuits, and class action legal proceedings in 2010. These days it's the courts that largely dictate who must be hired, who can be fired, and what can and can't happen to retail employees in the workplace between the hirings and the firings.
A 59 year-old man filed a lawsuit in September against Family Fare Convenience Stores which claimed he was the victim of religious discrimination after he was told during a job interview that he would have to shave, get a haircut, and stop wearing his turban in order to get a job at a Family Fare Convenience Store.
In a similar lawsuit, a young woman claims that she was the victim of religious discrimination when she was not hired at a California Abercrombie Kids store because she was wearing a hijab (head scarf) at her job interview.
Perhaps these are legitimate religious discrimination cases, which would be unfortunate, but there is always a possibility that these two people weren't hired because there are millions of people out of work, actively looking for jobs, and submitting applications at places like Family Fare Convenience Stores and Abercrombie & Fitch. I know it's a stretch, but there's a small possibility that there was nothing wrong with these two job candidates in the eyes of the hiring manager, but something very right with two other job candidates. And just because a hiring manager doesn't hire every person who walks through the door wearing a hijab or turban doesn't necessarily mean that there is any sort of discrimination involved.
A nice, big, juicy discrimination lawsuit award would help pay a lot of bills for an hourly retail employee, and even a small out of court settlement could ease the pain of retail unemployment. But the fact of the matter is that there are just not enough jobs to go around and there hasn't been for quite some. People of all religious faiths are having to deal with that harsh employment reality. So, playing the religious discrimination card might be a good alternative to continuing a fruitless job search, but it's not necessarily a legitimate reason why turban and hijab-wearing Americans are unemployed.
Having said that, it's really not too much of a stretch to believe that there may have been some discrimination involved with the Abercrombie Kids hire.
Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) was slapped with a $40 million court judgment in 2005, and the check was payable to a group of African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and women who were refused employment. Today on Abercrombie.com, the company boasts that 50.22% of its employees are "people of color." (Is that a P.C. term again?) So apparently Abercrombie has complied with court-ordered diversity "goals" (not "quotas,").
Still, Abercrombie & Fitch is being accused of discrimination again, which Abercrombie continues to want to justify with the company's "look policy," which it considers to be BFOQ - a Bona Fide Occupational Qualification that is necessary for the successful sales of t-shirts and jeans that are priced significantly higher than those sold by their competitors.
Certainly it is not for bloggers to decide whether these lawsuits are part of a growing trend of religious discrimination, or whether they are just an example of either bad management practices or opportunistic employees. It is a fact that anybody can sue anybody for anything in the U.S. which is a positive aspect of democracy, but not such a positive aspect of retail management.
Because of the litigious nature of Americans, retail managers are sometimes not asking questions about what is right, appropriate, good business, or positive motivation in the workplace any more. Instead, they're asking what can and can't be done legally. Legal compliance is becoming the substitute for good hiring, good management, fair discipline, and justified termination practices all too often these days.
Most judges don't have much recent hands-on retail management experience, yet their decisions are dictating and mandating how many crucial aspects of a retail business must be done.
The challenge for retail managers is to resist the temptation to abdicate managerial responsibility by substituting compliance for leadership. It's still important that employees are able to follow the leader even as their leader is following the law. That's not an easy position for retail industry leaders to be in, but every retail operation needs better leadership than the bare minimum required by law.