News Notes: Maker Of Wonder Bread Ordered To Pay $131 Million For Race Bias

A San Francisco jury has ordered the nation’s largest wholesale baker to pay $11 million in compensatory damages and a whopping $120 million in punitive damages to African-American workers who said they were subjected to racial slurs, unequal treatment and other indignities by co-workers and supervisors at three Bay Area plants. Workers testified that they were denied pay raises and promotions; they trained white employees who were then promoted above them; and white employees got personal days off to attend Giants’ games, but blacks couldn’t take Martin Luther King Day off. Interstate Brands Corp., the Kansas City-based parent company, denies the allegations and plans to appeal.