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Denver food distributor agrees to hiring oversight after EEOC discrimination case
Mile Hi Companies will pay $1.5 million to resolve claims that its hiring directives discriminated against Black applicants and women. The company denies wrongdoing but must also retain an outside consultant to review its hiring practices.
Mile Hi Companies has agreed to pay $1.5 million and bring in an outside hiring-practices consultant to resolve a federal discrimination case involving alleged race- and sex-based hiring directives at the Denver-area food distributor.
A consent decree signed by the company in August and ordered by a federal judge on Sept. 17 directs $600,000 to former human resources manager Marianne Apodaca and her attorney. The remaining money is to be distributed among applicants who were not hired, with payments based on an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission review of their circumstances.
The EEOC’s complaint alleged that company CEO Tony Taddonio instructed Apodaca not to hire too many Black applicants and to avoid hiring attractive women for warehouse jobs. The complaint said Taddonio believed Black workers were likely to quit and that women he considered attractive would distract male warehouse employees. Apodaca was fired in 2019 after resisting the alleged instructions, according to the complaint.
Mile Hi denies liability and says it agreed to the decree to avoid the expense and disruption of further litigation. The agreement does not constitute an admission that the company violated the law.
The EEOC contacted former applicants to determine who qualified for compensation. Mary Jo O’Neill, an EEOC attorney who worked on the case, said the agency is distributing the payments. One applicant, who had become unhoused, is expected to receive roughly $40,000 to $50,000, she said.
The decree also requires Mile Hi to post notices stating that discrimination based on race, sex or national origin is illegal. The company must preserve hiring records, and an independent consultant must review its employee handbooks, equal-employment and anti-retaliation policies, and recordkeeping practices annually.
Apodaca worked at Mile Hi from 2015 to 2019. The EEOC charged the company with discrimination in November 2019. The complaint also alleged that the company discarded job applications after three months, despite being reminded to preserve records relevant to the investigation.
O’Neill called the alleged conduct unusual in her four decades as an employment attorney. Apodaca’s lawyer, Thomas Arckey, described the case as particularly serious because, he said, the evidence included explicit statements about whom the company should hire.
Mile Hi employs several hundred people. The decree resolves the claims without a trial, while requiring changes intended to prevent discriminatory hiring and retaliation against workers who object to unlawful practices.