A former regional director of a Philadelphia Starbucks cafe at the center of a racially charged incident that sparked national protests of the company is now suing her former employer for racial discrimination. The company, she alleges, fired her, a white female, and unfairly punished other white employees in order to appease protesters.
Shannon Phillips, the former regional director whose region included a Center City Philadelphia Starbucks, says she was fired less than a month after one of the store’s managers called police to remove two black men who remained in the cafe after refusing to order anything.
Phillips says she was terminated “because she objected to placing the white district manager at the 18th and Spruce Streets store on administrative leave for purportedly paying lower salaries to black workers than their white counterparts,” The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Thursday.
“Phillips, who lives in South Jersey and worked for the coffee chain for 13 years, says Starbucks’ reason for disciplining the manager was ‘factually impossible,’ as the company’s ‘Partner Resources’ branch sets employee salaries without input from the store’s district manager,” the paper reports.
In response, Phillips has filed a lawsuit against the company alleging racial discrimination. Her attorney has asked for a jury trial.
In a statement to CBS3 Philadelphia, Starbucks denied the accusation. “We deny the claims of the lawsuit and are prepared to defend our case in court,” a Starbucks spokesperson told the outlet.
Read More...
Starbucks Sued For Discriminating Against White People
Current News
The NeverTrumper Who Lectured America on the Rule of Law Is Taking a Plea Deal
John Bolton spent years telling you that Donald Trump was a threat to American institutions. That the rule of law mattered. That classified information was sacred and the men who mishandled it were unfit for public trust. Read more
From ‘Mother’ to ‘Gestating Parent’: A Civilization Loses Its Words and Then Itself
The Roman Republic did not collapse because its legions were defeated in the field. It eroded, gradually and almost imperceptibly, from within. Sallust, writing in the generation before the Republic’s final crisis, identified the mechanism with uncommon clarity: when a civilization abandons the virtues that built it, the language through which those virtues were expressed becomes the first casualty. Words grow contested. Then they are redefined. Then they are replaced. By the time a republic wakes to what has happened, the vocabulary of self-governance has already been emptied of its meaning. Read more
The Lie of Institutional Neutrality: What Pride Month Reveals About Who Controls the Cathedral
Alexis de Tocqueville, writing of democratic despotism in Democracy in America, described a system that would not tyrannize through violence but through the steady degradation of citizenship — a society in which an “immense and tutelary power” would keep citizens “in perpetual childhood,” covering the surface of society “with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform.” He envisioned an authority that would not break wills so much as soften them, not forbid but prevent, not punish but enfeeble. Read more
Marc Elias Went to Court to Kill the Fund That Would Pay Back His Victims. Senate Republicans Are Helping.
Marc Elias went to federal court to kill the fund that would pay back his victims. Senate Republicans are helping. Read more
They Called It a Peaceful Protest. A Reporter Had to Hide Her Network Logo to Stay Safe.
They called it a peaceful protest. Read more
Thucydides, Tehran, and the Temptation of a Quick Settlement
In the seventh year of the Peloponnesian War, Athens found itself holding a position of unexpected strength. Its navy was dominant, its treasury sufficient, its enemies fractured. Sparta, exhausted and humiliated by losses at Sphacteria, sent envoys seeking terms. The peace was theirs to dictate. Read more