Four former employees of CVS in New York have claimed that their bosses asked them to target black and Hispanic shoppers. On Wednesday, they filed a class-action lawsuit against the drug-store chain.

They have also alleged that they were sacked out of the job after they complained about racial discrimination, against customers as well as them. The plaintiffs who are either black or Hispanic said that their two supervisors in CVS’s loss-prevention department used to ask them to racially profile nonwhite shoppers.

One of the supervisors, Anthony Salvatore, used to tell to his colleagues that ‘black people always are the ones that are the thieves’ and ‘lots of Hispanic people steal’. Second supervisor, Abdul Selene, advised detectives, ‘watch the black and Hispanic people to catch more cases’.

When the plaintiffs shared the matter to officials at CVS then they were subjected with weeks ‘to increased scrutiny, micromanagement and fabricated performance criticism’. David E. Gottlieb, a lawyer for the plaintiffs was of the view, “this is the first time a group of employees has banded together to provide an inside account and expose the blatant racial profiling policy at one of the largest retailers in the world”.

Carolyn Castel, a spokeswoman for CVS, based in Maryland, said about the company that it has strong nondiscrimination policies and they follow them religiously.