Meat-processing giant Swift & Co. has agreed to hire 141 rejected female job applicants at its Greeley plant and pay 2,481 women $700,000 to end a U.S. Department of Labor investigation.
The women were denied employment as unskilled laborers at Swift between June 1, 2002, and May 31, 2004, the Labor Department said. The investigation was prompted by the findings of an evaluation of Swift’s hiring records, a routine procedure for federal contractors. Swift supplies meat to the U.S. Department of Defense.
The 141 jobs are worth an estimated $3.6 million including wages and benefits, the department said.
The settlement marks at least the second time the government has found hiring discrimination at the Greeley company. In 2002, Swift agreed to pay $190,000 to settle U.S. Department of Justice claims that a Swift plant in Worthington, Minn., discriminated against applicants who looked “foreign.”
Swift employs about 2,000 at its Greeley processing facility.
The agreement with the Labor Department “does not constitute an admission by Swift to any violation,” said company spokesman Sean McHugh. “Going forward, we’re going to continue to strive to hire and attract a diverse workforce.”
After finding hiring anomalies in its initial evaluation, the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs began a formal probe.
Investigators used mathematical models to determine that Swift discriminated against women by hiring 141 fewer female applicants than it should have during that time. The department identified 2,481 women who applied for work and were rejected.
Swift, a publicly traded company, “failed to uniformly apply selection criteria to applicants without regard to gender,” the department said in a release Tuesday. “Women applying for unskilled/general laborer positions were unlawfully screened out by the company’s hiring process.”
The positions were in meatpacking and support, McHugh said. He did not provide a wage range.
The new hires will come from those rejected applicants. The company has already contacted some of the women and made an unspecified number of hires.
Swift was a division of Omaha-based ConAgra Foods until September 2002, when it was sold to Booth Creek Management and Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst for $1.4 billion.
Earlier in 2002, ConAgra recalled 18.6 million pounds of beef from the Greeley plant that was linked to 46 illnesses and one death.
Staff writer Greg Griffin can be reached at 303-820-1241 or ggriffin@denverpost.com.
