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Adidas is being sued by a former US employee, who claims she was unlawfully fired after complaining about racist and sexist comments made by senior directors.
April Burton, who worked on Ivy Park, Adidas’s now-defunct collaboration with Beyoncé, alleges in US court filings that a senior colleague gave her the nickname “ape”. Burton claims that Adidas’s human resources department failed to resolve the issue after she complained in April 2022.
Furthermore, Burton alleges that a senior Adidas executive made a series of inappropriate remarks about Beyoncé at an evening event to celebrate the end of the company’s financial year, in 2023.
The claims come during a period in which Adidas has been accused of mishandling and playing down incidents of racism at the company.
The German sportswear group was criticised for allegedly turning a blind eye to inappropriate behaviour by Kanye West, the erratic rapper and fashion designer, who it partnered with on a hugely successful line of trainers. In 2022, Adidas eventually cut ties with West after his antisemitic tirade on social media sparked widespread outrage.
Burton is suing Adidas for $6.2mn in damages. Adidas said it had investigated her claims and found them to be “unfounded”, adding that it would “vigorously defend itself against these baseless accusations”.
Burton claims that when she complained to HR about being called “ape”, it was suggested that it was an “affectionate shortening” of her name and she had to be “very sure” before pursuing a formal complaint. Burton interpreted that as an attempt to deter her from doing so.
Separately, Roland Auschel, then Adidas’s chief sales officer, told Burton and her team in 2023 that Beyoncé’s body was “illicit”, according to her court claim. Auschel allegedly also questioned why her husband, hip hop mogul Jay-Z, was not running her business.
Burton says in her claim that she called out Auschel on his comments, urging him not to “denigrate the experience of black women”, and raised a formal complaint about his behaviour. She says that she subsequently met senior Adidas leaders, including chief executive Bjørn Gulden, to discuss the incident around March 2023.
In response to questions about Burton’s allegations, Auschel told the Financial Times that “those were certainly not my words, if they were ever spoken”.
In 2021, Auschel was the subject of a compliance probe, launched after a string of complaints by Adidas employees. The former Adidas executive received a “final warning” for repeatedly making “unacceptable” comments about diversity at the company, the FT reported in 2022.
Auschel described his departure from Adidas, which took place the following year, as being “on the best of terms”.
Burton claims in her filing that Adidas dangled the opportunity of a promotion after her meeting with Gulden, but instead demoted her following the end of the Ivy Park collaboration.
She initiated legal action in 2024, while still at the company, and claims in her legal filing that she was subsequently ostracised internally.
Burton, who joined Adidas in 2020, was dismissed from her role as a senior manager of statement operations in February this year, following what she describes in her claim as a “sham investigation”.
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