Walgreen (WAG) has agreed to pay $24 million to settle a federal lawsuit alleging racial bias by the company and some 10,000 past and present black workers around the country will participate in the settlement.

WAG is also required to hire outside consultants to review and make recommendations about the company's employment practices, including standardized, nondiscriminatory promotion and store assignments, procedures and promotional benchmarks. The federal court will monitor WAG's performance for five years.

The settlement involved two lawsuits that had been consolodated: one by the the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the other a private class action. They alleged that WAG assigned black managers, management trainees and pharmacists to low-performing stores and to stores in black communities, and denied promotions to them based on race.

You can read more here: http://www.eeoc.gov./press/3-25-08.html

Last April, after several stock watchers reported on WAG, I mentioned the EEOC's lawsuit in the thread, Walgreen Company Update, 4Q 2006.

Armin