Patel works for Zara in Manhattan.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: An Indian American executive at international clothing giant Zara is one of the defendants named in a discrimination lawsuit filed by a former employee that is seeking more than $40 million in damages.
According to the lawsuit, Ian Jack Miller, the former general counsel of Zara USA, was fired in March because he is “Jewish, American, and gay.”
“Mr. Miller is seeking damages totaling more than $40 million for a hostile work environment, pay discrimination, and discriminatory and retaliatory termination,” a spokesman for the plaintiff’s law firm told EFE.
The lawsuit, filed in the Supreme Court in the state of New York this week, named Zara, Dilip Patel, and Moises Costas Rodriguez.
Patel is the Country Manager for Zara USA and works at Zara’s Manhattan office while Rodriguez is the former CEO for Zara USA and the current Director of Expansion for North and South America.
The lawsuit said Patel “was responsible for much of the hostile work environment, pay discrimination, retaliation, and unlawful termination that Miller experienced.” and that Patel is a “friend” of Ortega who was installed by him personally in 2013.
It further alleged that Patel had a strong personal connection to the company’s founder and as a “result of this personal connection, he “engaged in discriminatory and harassing conduct with impunity.”
According to the court documents, “supervisors and colleagues sent Miller homophobic emails, made anti-Semitic remarks in his presence and boasted that Spanish employees enjoyed more job security than employees of other nationalities.”
Miller told Fox News Latino that Zara USA’s top executives “regularly” exchanged racist e-mails, including ones portraying Michelle Obama serving fried chicken and emails depicting Barack Obama in a Ku Klux Klan hood and with a Confederate flag.
Zara was founded in 1975 and operates more than 2,000 stores across 88 nations, according to its website. Last summer, the company was forced to issue a public apology in response to uproar over a T-shirt it produced that resembled a Nazi concentration camp uniform, including a yellow six-pointed star the company said was supposed to be a sheriff’s badge.
They’ve also sold blackface necklaces and swastika-emblazoned handbags, according to Jezebel. Despite the occasional bad press it receives, Zara’s owner, Armancio Ortega, recently surpassed Warren Buffett as the second-richest man in the world with a net worth of $71.5 billion.
1 Comment
um, i don’t know where you get your info from, but mr. patel is not american. he is british.