Trader Joe’s Co. and two Black women who allege they experienced racial discrimination while working at company stores in Atlanta, then found many of the same conditions after transferring to locations in Southern California, have reached tentative settlements with the grocery store chain.
Josey Chappell, who is co-represented by civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, and Angel Robertson brought their Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuits in December 2021, seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
Attorneys for both women filed court papers Tuesday with Judge Rupert A. Byrdsong notifying him of a “conditional” settlement of the case. The court papers do not divulge any terms, but do state that a request for dismissal of the suits is expected by Oct. 16.
Trader Joe’s attorneys argued in their court papers that the women’s claims were unsubstantiated.
According to Chappell’s suit, she was hired as a crew member at a Trader Joe’s store in Atlanta in January 2020 and transferred to a location on National Boulevard near Palms in June 2021.
Having already experienced racial discrimination on the job at the Atlanta store, Chappell, now 48, encountered some of the same treatment at the National Boulevard location, her suit alleged. She was subjected to derogatory comments against Black people, received harsh treatment, was given undesirable and difficult tasks and — unlike non-Black employees — was heavily scrutinized for work errors, the Chappell suit alleged.
During the last hour of a closing shift in September 2021, the store loudspeaker played music that relentlessly included use of the “N-word” for more than an hour, the Chappell suit stated.
A fellow employee, referring to a customer’s purchases, told Chappell, “Oh, look Josey, chicken and watermelon,” the Chappell suit stated.
Chappell was once again treated adversely by colleagues after a late September 2021 transfer to the Westchester store and so she was moved to the Culver City store the next month after a discussion of her complaints with a Trader Joe’s regional vice president, her suit stated.
However, Chappell continued to experience “discriminatory, aggressive, harassing, hostile and retaliatory treatment” despite several store transfers and her providing documentation of her experiences in each, her suit stated.
“Ms. Chappell firmly and justly believed that transferring to yet another Trader Joe’s location would not sufficiently prevent the ongoing retaliation and harassment that she consistently faced at every Trader Joe’s store” and she resigned in November 2021, her suit stated.
Robertson was hired as a crew member at a Trader Joe’s store in Atlanta in November 2019 and in July 2021 transferred to the National Boulevard store, where she initially received numerous compliments praising her work ethic from her supervisors and store manager and was considered for a promotion from crew member to order-taker, her suit states.
However, the work environment changed when the store manager wrote a poor work evaluation for Robertson and made it available to all store supervisors, according to Robertson’s suit.
“Plaintiff’s once peaceful and progressive work environment … was suddenly transformed into a tense and hostile workplace,” the Robertson suit stated. “Plaintiff, once praised by her superiors, was routinely ignored and subjected to varying shift changes and longer hours without notice or reason.”
Robertson was abruptly assigned tasks that required heavy lifting and her training to be an order-taker stopped, the Robertson suit stated.
“The same supervisors who had once praised plaintiff for her work ethic incessantly harangued plaintiff with unnecessary questions about her job responsibilities and micro-managed her in such a way as to cause her humiliation and discomfort,” the Robertson suit alleges.
Robertson, who suffered mental and emotional stress as well as chronic back pains, resigned because of the work conditions in August 2021, her suit stated.