The sports brand Adidas rejected the accusations launched by workers in the United States, who denounce racial problems in the company, a week after having promised greater diversity in new hires.
A group of 83 workers in the United States asked the supervisory board of the German sports brand to investigate the director of human resources, Karen Parkinaccused of having minimized the problems of racism in the company.
They also demanded the creation of an anonymous public platform to file complaints of racism, Adidas said, confirming information from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
Some black American employees told the newspaper that the German company culture is far from egalitarian.
“We firmly reject all the statements made in the letter to the supervisory board”, the company responded in a statement sent to AFP this Wednesday.
At an employee meeting last year at the headquarters of the Reebok subsidiary in Boston, Parkin called racism a “noise” which is only treated in the United States and a problem that does not affect the group’s brands, published the WSJ.
On June 12, Parkin apologized in an intranet message in which he estimated that he had to “have used a more appropriate word” at the meeting at the headquarters of reeboksa text to which AFP has had access.
“Adidas and Reebok have always been and will be against discrimination in all its forms, united against racism”, said a statement from Adidas on Wednesday.
The German company, which has 60,000 employees worldwide, 10,000 of them in the United States, recalls that it already has a telephone platform to receive complaints related to these issues and an external mediator that responds to personnel issues, according to a spokesperson.
“We are now concentrating our efforts on making progress and immediately creating real change.”, the company said on Wednesday.
10th of June adidas announced that 30% of new hires in the United States will be black or of Latin American origin.
The German group also announced that it will raise to US$ 20 million, over the next four years, the amount allocated to support programs for the black community in the United States.
These announcements are made in the context of anti-racist demonstrations around the world after the death by suffocation at the end of May of George Floyd, a black man who was pinned to the ground by a white police officer in Minneapolis after his arrest.
