The Campbell\u2019s Co. said Tuesday it has placed one of its executives on leave while it investigates claims that he made racist comments and mocked the company\u2019s products and customers in an audio recording.<\/p>\n
Martin Bally, Campbell\u2019s vice president of information technology, was named in a lawsuit filed last week by Robert Garza, a former Campbell\u2019s employee. The lawsuit was filed in Michigan, where both men live. Campbell\u2019s is headquartered in New Jersey.<\/p>\n
In the lawsuit, Garza claimed he met with Bally in November 2024 to discuss his salary. During the meeting, which Garza allegedly recorded, Bally described Campbell\u2019s as \u201chighly process(ed) food\u201d and said it was for \u201cpoor people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Garza claimed that Bally made racist remarks about Indian workers, whom he called \u201cidiots,\u201d according to the lawsuit. Garza said Bally also told him that he often went to work high after consuming marijuana edibles.<\/p>\n
Garza said he told his manager on Jan. 10 that he wanted to report Bally\u2019s comments to Campbell\u2019s human resources department. Garza said Aupperle didn\u2019t encourage him to report the comments but also gave him no advice on how to proceed.<\/p>\n
On Jan. 30, Garza was terminated from Campbell\u2019s. He is seeking monetary damages from Campbell\u2019s. He also names Bally and the manager in the lawsuit, saying they were responsible for his termination.<\/p>\n
NBC News could not reach Bally on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
In its statement Tuesday, Campbell\u2019s said that if the comments on the audio recording were in fact made by Bally, they are unacceptable.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuch language does not reflect our values and the culture of our company,\u201d the company said. \u201cWe do not tolerate that kind of language under any circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
Campbell\u2019s added that the comments were allegedly made by someone in IT \u201cwho has nothing to do with how we make our food.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are proud of the food we make, the people who make it and the high-quality ingredients we use to provide consumers with good food at a good value,\u201d Campbell\u2019s said. \u201cThe comments heard on the recording about our food are not only inaccurate \u2014 they are patently absurd.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Campbell\u2019s Co. said Tuesday it has placed one of its executives on leave while it investigates claims that he made racist comments and mocked the company\u2019s products and customers in an audio recording. Martin Bally, Campbell\u2019s vice president of information technology, was named in a lawsuit filed last week by Robert Garza, a former <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4494,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4493","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}