Adidas workers raised issues about Ye’s conduct for years, report says

The chief government and different senior leaders at Adidas mentioned the potential fallout from its relationship with Kanye West way back to 4 years in the past, in accordance with a report from The Wall Avenue Journal.

Throughout a 2018 presentation to the Adidas government board, a gaggle of workers reportedly outlined the dangers that they confronted by interacting with West, who has legally modified his title to Ye. The presentation included a variety of mitigation methods that included chopping ties with the Yeezy creator, the report mentioned.

However Adidas executives didn’t sever ties when these issues had been raised, and as a substitute continued to fulfill with Ye to attempt to maintain onto the partnership, which made almost $2 billion a yr for Adidas, or 10% of its income, in accordance with Morningstar analyst David Swartz. Throughout one assembly in September of this yr, the report mentioned, Ye accused Adidas executives of stealing his designs and confirmed them a clip of an grownup video.

The German sportswear large formally terminated its partnership with Ye in October after the musician made a collection of offensive and antisemitic feedback.

“Adidas doesn’t tolerate antisemitism and every other kind of hate speech,” the corporate mentioned in an announcement. “Ye’s latest feedback and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and harmful, and so they violate the corporate’s values of variety and inclusion, mutual respect and equity.”

A month later, Adidas introduced that it’s investigating accusations made by employees referring to Ye’s conduct after an nameless letter alleged years of abuse.

Ye’s alleged habits was not new, in accordance with workers who spoke to the Journal. A few of them had raised issues about Ye to leaders and human sources at Adidas way back to 2018.

“It’s presently not clear whether or not the accusations made in an nameless letter are true,” Adidas mentioned in an announcement Thursday. “Nevertheless, we take these allegations very severely and have taken the choice to launch an unbiased investigation of the matter instantly to deal with the allegations.”