Schrager pays $1m over racial bias row

Ian Schrager's Los Angeles hotel the Mondrian has agreed to pay more than $1m (£600,000) to nine porters and valets who were allegedly dismissed for being "too ethnic".

The staff - three Filipinos, two Cambodians, two Latinos, one black person and one white person - had each worked at the hotel for between two and nine years. They were replaced by 15 white people.

The dismissals took place just before the hotel reopened in late 1996 after having been closed for renovation.

The hotel, which Schrager bought out of bankruptcy in 1995, has settled a pending lawsuit filed by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EOCC) on behalf of the nine employees.

They will receive $120,000 (£80,000) each as part of the settlement with the EOCC.

The "too ethnic" complaint was made in a memo written by Schrager to the head of the hotel's restaurant.

While it was unclear whether it referred specifically to the dismissed workers, the EOCC intended to use the memo in court as evidence of racial bias.

"We feel badly that these former employees were lost in the chaos of the reopening and that their discharge may not have been handled as sensitively as it could have been," said general manager David Weidlich.

He added: "We have taken steps to ensure this type of thing cannot happen again."

A company spokesman said that there was no race bias at Schrager's two hotels in London - the Sanderson and St Martin's Lane. He said both properties employed people from ethnic minorities.

by Angela Frewin angela.frewin@rbi.co.uk

Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 17 August 2000