MANHATTAN (CN) - Zara's past scandals for clothing designs perceived as having Nazi imagery and racist slogans reflect a deeper corporate culture of bias, the company's former lawyer claims in a $40 million lawsuit.
Ian Jack Miller, who represented Zara for seven years as in-house counsel, accuses Zara USA and two of its executives of religious and sexual discrimination firsthand in an alarming 30-page complaint filed Wednesday in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Zara's predominantly Spanish, straight and Christian executives - including an ex-CEO - mocked real estate developers as "los judios" ("the Jews"), exchanged racist emails of President Barack Obama wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood, bragged about their sexual prowess, and subjected staff to sexist and homophobic messages, Miller claims.
The lawsuit begins with a retelling of Zara's past scandals involving what some customers described as Nazi and racist imagery.
"Zara cultivates a worldly and cosmopolitan image, but the company is notorious for selling products featuring racist and anti-Semitic images and messages, including handbags depicting swastikas, children's pajamas resembling concentration camp uniforms (a product that, after an international outcry, the company said would be 'exterminated'), necklaces containing figurines in black face, and a T-shirt proclaiming that 'White Is the New Black,'" the complaint states. [Parentheses in original.]
In August 2014, Zara executives described the resemblance between the yellow-star pajamas and concentration camp uniforms as accidental. The clothing had been meant to look like a sheriff's outfit, executives insisted at the time.
Seven years earlier, Zara withdrew handbags that featured swastikas, but not before noting that the symbol is considered sacred in Hindu and Buddhist iconography.
Rejecting these episodes as gaffes, Miller instead casts them as reflections of the fashion designer's corporate climate of racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia.
"While customers have glimpsed only sporadic flashes of the company's hostility to outsiders, Zara's employees see a more complete and disturbing picture," the complaint states.
Zara favors employees who - like the company's founder and majority shareholder Amancio Ortega Goana - "are straight, Spanish, and Christian," Miller claims
"For example, senior executives at Zara openly used racial slurs and exchanged racist emails, including emails portraying Michelle Obama serving fried chicken and emails depicting Barack Obama in a Ku Klux Klan hood, with a Confederate flag, on a Cream of Wheat box, on an Aunt Jemima box, and shining shoes," the complaint states.
Miller, who is Jewish, gay and a U.S. citizen, claims that he experienced discrimination firsthand as the company's general counsel between 2008 and 2015.
"Supervisors and colleagues sent Mr. Miller homophobic emails, made anti-Semitic remarks in his presence, and boasted that Spanish employees enjoyed more job security than employees of other nationalities," the complaint says. "Upon information and belief, Zara also gave Mr. Miller lower raises than employees who did not share his protected characteristics, even though Mr. Miller was a strong performer, the company's revenues were growing, and other Zara employees who fit the company's preferred profile received higher raises. The overriding message of these actions and communications was that Mr. Miller was an outsider who was unwelcome at Zara."
In May 2013, Miller says that his treatment got worse after Zara's senior executive learned about his Jewish heritage and he advised the company about its compliance with New York Labor Law.