Fines Working To End Discrimination

Just six years after paying $54 million to settle two race discrimination suits, Fortune magazine rates Denny's parent company, Advantica, as the best place for minorities to work.

Nearly half of its 45,000 employees are minorities. And more than a quarter of Denny's restaurants are minority-owned.

Still, Advantica CEO Jim Adamson admits there is a long way to go.

"Discrimination is still going to occur at Denny's. I hire America, and America discriminates, so for me to assume that we have now become number one and we're not going to have discrimination take place in the restaurants is naïve," he says.

Denny's is still changing. It's become a leader in diversity training. Some employees are required to take up to thirty days of racial sensitivity classes.

Managers and their staff are trained to treat customers and each other with respect.

Increasingly, it has taken multi-million dollar lawsuits to force companies to change its corporate culture.

In 1996, the oil giant Texaco was forced to pay $176 million, the largest amount ever paid to settle a racial discrimination case.

Bari-Ellen Roberts, the lead plaintiff in that case, says, "It gave people a sense of empowerment that these corporations, these institutions aren't so big and so monolithic that they can't be taken on and made to pay."

Janet Stoner, a human resource executive at Texaco, says, "Texaco has made it very clear that we have no tolerance for discrimination."

She says Texaco is in the third year of implementing a comprehensive diversity program.

According, to a 1999 task force report, minorities made up 44 percent of all the new hires and women and minorities together made up 67.7 percent of new hires and promotions.

While Stoner was willing to talk to CBS News about Texaco's progress, Texaco wouldn't allow camera crews to tape any of the 800 employees who work at Texaco's headquarters in White Plains, New York.

She says, "Diversity and building an inclusive environment is a journey, it doesn't end, we will continue our commitment, it's part of who we are."

Denny's Jim Adamson agrees. He says that any company that has a problem with discrimination is making a mistake if they try to deny it.

He says, "If we had just said, 'We have a problem, we are just going to deal with it, and we're very sorry,' it would have save us millions and millions of dollars."

One corporation apparently did not learn the lesson: Interstate Bakeries, the makers of Wonder Bread.

Last month, it was ordered to pay $131 million to 21 workers for racial discrimination.