Home Depot Settles Lawsuit Claiming Women Held Back At Work Agrees To Pay $87.5 Million, Improve Assignment, Promotion

Home Depot, the home improvement discount chain accused of parking women behind cash registers instead of putting them on the sales floor and promoting them, agreed Friday to pay an $87.5 million settlement and reform its assignment and promotion practices.

The suit and the agreement, reached in mediation with a trial that was to have begun in San Francisco on Monday, directly applies to about 25,000 women who have worked for, or applied to, stores in the eight states of the chain’s West Coast division.

But Home Depot, with 118,000 employees and 569 stores, said that new procedures meant to advance women would take effect throughout the company.

Home Depot, admitting no wrongdoing, also agreed to settle three other sex discrimination suits for amounts the company refused to specify, beyond including them in $17 million of related costs.

Such cases are part of a new stage in the civil rights movement, transforming many companies’ rules for hiring, pay scales and promotions. Federal lawsuits in which large numbers of employees team up to complain of systematic discrimination by their companies have more than doubled in four years.

The Home Depot agreement follows several large employment bias settlements - especially among retailers, including the Lucky Stores, Safeway and Albertson’s supermarket chains - in recent years. In November, Texaco agreed to pay $140 million to black employees who accused the company of denying them promotions because of their race.

Another of the nation’s largest grocery chains, Publix Supermarkets, agreed in January to pay $81.5 million to settle accusations of sex bias and $3.5 million more over similar accusations of racial bias.

Home Depot, based in Atlanta, has rapidly spread its discount, warehouse-style stores across the nation. The company has also gained a reputation as a prized employer and, in business surveys. one of the nation’s most admired workplaces.

Home Depot prefers hiring salespeople with experience in the construction trades so they know their products and can better advise do-it-yourselfers. Women, however, complained that they were often confined to jobs with little prospect of advancement, even if they had the sort of construction experience that helped qualify men for the sales floors and promotions.