A senior Adidas executive resigned Tuesday, weeks after several black employees lobbied for his dismissal amid a larger protest over what they said were past acts of racism and discrimination at the company.
Karen Parkin, who is British, had been the only woman on Adidas’ six-person executive board since 2017, and was responsible for human resources across the company. She worked for Adidas for more than 20 years in sales, business development and supply chain positions in Britain and the United States, and at the company’s headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany.
“His decision to leave the company reflects that commitment and his belief that a new HR leader will better drive the pace of change that Adidas needs right now,” said Igor Landau, chairman of the company’s supervisory board, at a statement announcing that resignation. Germany has a two-tier board system in which a supervisory board is elected by both shareholders and employees, while the executive board manages the day-to-day operations of the company.
In a letter sent to employees and viewed by The New York Times, Parkin acknowledged that he had lost the trust of Adidas employees.
“While I would like to lead this critical transformation effort, after much reflection and listening to the feedback I have received, I have come to accept that I am not the right person to lead that change,” he wrote. “While I have always been 100 percent against racism and discrimination and have worked to create a more equitable environment, I recognize that focusing on myself has become an obstacle preventing the company from moving forward.”
For weeks, a group of Adidas employees have been protesting outside the company’s North American headquarters in Portland, Oregon. They say the company’s top executives have fostered a culture that allowed racism and discrimination, and did not invest in black employees or respect black culture. while exploiting those two groups to sell shoes and clothes.
This month, Ms. Parkin, who is white, apologized for her response, describing how Adidas “saw race issues at our North American headquarters” during a meeting last year. Her apology came through a post on the company’s internal messaging system that was seen by The Times.
It was a response to an open letter from Aaron Ture, product manager for Reebok, a Boston-based subsidiary of Adidas. In his letter, Mr. Ture described a company-wide meeting held in Boston in August in which Parkin, who lived in Portland but whose office was in Germany, was asked about racism within the company.
“This is the noise we only hear in North America,” recalled Mr. Ture, who replied that Mrs. Parkin responded, although he acknowledged that he couldn’t remember his exact answer word for word. “I don’t think there is a problem, so I don’t feel the need to answer this question.”
Mrs. Parkin’s apology, in which she wrote, “If I had offended someone, I apologize,” many employees considered themselves hollow.
“Are you willing to admit that your handling of the response was incorrect, but cannot take full ownership and sincerely apologize?” An employee responded on the internal messaging system. “This is very disappointing.”
Another simply posted a link to the Wikipedia article for an apology no apology.
In mid-June, dozens of Adidas employees sent a letter to the company’s supervisory board, asking it to investigate whether Parkin had taken the right approach against racism in the workplace, according to The Wall Street Journal.
An investigation by The Times a year ago revealed that the company’s predominantly white Portland leadership was struggling with issues of race and discrimination. And the company has stumbled in its response to global protests after the murder of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck. In late May, he posted an image of the crossed-out word “racism” on Instagram, which many employees viewed as ineffective.
A group of predominantly black employees began working with the mostly white leadership in Portland on a list of demands, including the most diverse hiring and investment in the black community, to present executives in Germany, while another began daily protests at noon outside the company. facilities. Employees shared stories of discrimination and racist encounters on social media, in meetings and in open letters addressed to their superiors.
In response, Adidas promised that 30 percent of its new hires would be black or Latino. She also pledged to expand funding for programs that address racial disparities to $ 120 million over five years and to fund 50 college scholarships a year for black students over the next five years.
And the company posted new images on Instagram, stating unequivocally that “black lives matter” and that “adidas’ success would be nothing without black athletes, black artists, black employees and black consumers. Period.”
