French vaccine manufacturer Sanofi was hit with a federal civil rights complaint alleging racial and sex discrimination in its hiring practices by America First Legal, a non-profit organization that seeks to end discrimination in corporate America.
The complaint comes in the wake of an exposé from James O’Keefe, who posted a video of Sanofi Senior Vice President Carole Huntsman outlining the company’s plans for “internal promotions and external hiring.” Huntsman explained that “one in five hires needs to be a black employee” and “one in ten has to be a Latinx employee” in order to meet the company’s goals.
DEI LEAK: Executives from Pharma company Sanofi caught on leaked zoom call discussing discriminatory hiring practices:
Carole Huntsman, Former Senior VP:
“One in five hires NEEDS to be a black employee for us to meet our goals” …
“One in ten HAS to be a Latinx employee.”… pic.twitter.com/BgHzHNDa4Q
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) December 22, 2023
“The evidence strongly suggests Sanofi’s management has created a culture of systemic racism,” America First Legal contended, also pointing to Sanofi’s “Diverse Slate Policy,” which required talent acquisition teams to find “a minimum of one person of color and one female in each slate presented to a hiring leader” as part of a plan to achieve “at least 50% diverse representation of 25% POC and 25% female representation.”
Sanofi also outlined its demographic goals for 2025, stating that it intends to have “women representing 40% of executives and 50% of senior leadership” across the globe, also aiming for “37% people of color representation” in the United States.
Progress towards these goals even affected the compensation of those employed by Sanofi, with CEO Paul Hudson’s compensation in 2022 being influenced by the fact that the “number of women recruited to positions at level 5 and above” was “slightly below target.”
Sanofi also applied racial and sex quotas to its supplier diversity program, America First Legal asserts, pointing out that the company set a goal of reaching a “total diversity spend of 1.5 billion Euros by 2025.”
“Many in the business world have lost their minds. Instead of valuing individuals as individuals and selecting personnel for hiring and promotion based on merit, radical advocates have convinced otherwise intelligent people in corporate America that the only thing that matters is a person’s skin color or sex,” America First Legal Vice President and General Counsel Gene Hamilton remarked. “Unsurprisingly, these race-based employment practices are illegal, and we are wholly committed to ensuring that they end everywhere that we find them.”