Aug. 24--The Niketown store on Chicago's Magnificent Mile discriminated against African-American employees by segregating them into jobs in the stockroom and denying them promotions to higher-paying sales positions, claims an amended federal lawsuit filed Monday.
The store, owned by Nike Inc., one of the world's largest athletic footwear makers, employed 63 stockroom workers between January 2001 and May 2003, the suit said. Of those, 46 were African Americans and three were Caucasian. The starting hourly wage was less than $8 an hour, the suit said.
During that same time period, eight of the 33 "commissioned sales specialists" were African American and 23 were Caucasian. The sales specialists often earned three to four times as much as a stockroom employee, the suit said.
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