The company seems to have a "policy" where if a customer appeared likely to steal, he or she would be called a "special order," causing an employee to follow that specific person around the store.
Out of 57 percent of employees who answered that they were familiar with the term "special order", 46 percent said that black shoppers were given the label "always," or "often." The report found that "black customers are almost 7 times more likely to be labeled a special order than white customers."
Not only is it likely for an African American customer to be followed around the store, but they also are discriminated when they try to make a return. Through interviews, the research team found that "customers of color are also treated differently when they attempt to make returns or exchanges to Zara stores." One employee recalled an instance where a white customer was able to return a product without questioning, while an African American customer was denied his request to return.
A Zara USA spokesperson denied the claims in a comment to Fashionista.
Zara USA vehemently refutes the claims contained in the Center for Popular Democracy report, which was prepared with ulterior motives and not because of any actual discrimination or mistreatment. It fails to follow an acceptable methodology for the conduct of a credible objective survey on workplace practices, and instead appears to have taken an approach to achieve a pre-determined result which was to discredit Zara. Zara USA believes that the claims made in the report are completely inconsistent with the company’s true culture and the experiences of the over 1,100 Zara employees in New York City and over 3,500 in all the US.
Zara has been dealt its fair share of controversy over the years, specifically regarding antisemitism. In August 2014, a "sheriff" t-shirt was pulled from stores after customers recognized its resemblance to a Nazi concentration camp uniform. More recently, Zara's former corporate lawyer filed a $40 million discrimination suit stating that he believes he was fired because he's Jewish, American and gay.