Health care giant Kaiser Permanente has agreed to pay $11.5 million to settle claims going back 15 years that it illegally discriminated against thousands of Black employees — half of them in the Bay Area — by denying them equal pay and promotions.

The 111-page settlement, which requires court approval, would resolve a class-action lawsuit claiming Kaiser’s alleged bias affected 2,225 Black workers in administrative support and consulting services in California.

One of the four named plaintiffs — two current employees and two former, all from Kaiser’s Oakland headquarters — alleged she took a demotion just to escape “blatant racism” in her department.

The class of workers would share $7.6 million, with the four plaintiffs receiving $60,000 to $75,000 each for bringing the case. Another roughly $3.5 milliion would go to legal fees. The deal announced Thursday by the plaintiffs’ law firm noted that Oakland-based Kaiser, a non-profit consortium with about 217,000 employees, denies wrongdoing.

“It is because of our commitment to equity and fairness that we have been especially saddened to learn that any employee would feel discriminated against at Kaiser Permanente,” the health care consortium said Thursday in an emailed statement. “While various elements of the lawsuits are subject to dispute, we recognize the importance of listening to and learning from our employees.”

The Black employees earned less than White employees performing similar work, and although Black workers received comparable performance evaluations to non-Black workers, they were not promoted in the same manner, according to the lawsuit. The suit was also filed Thursday, but followed from a complaint to California’s equal-employment regulator in late 2018, and subsequent negotiations between Kaiser and the plaintiffs.

Plaintiff Kenya Mayfield worked for Kaiser for more than 31 years, according to the suit. She had to wait “significantly longer” than two White women for a promotion to senior manager and was never promoted to director, as her two White, female counterparts were, despite doing the work of a director for a year without the corresponding pay, the suit alleged.

“Ms. Mayfield accepted a demotion down to managerial consultant in June 2016 in order to escape a department plagued by blatant racism,” the suit alleged, adding that she never advanced back up to her previous position before she resigned four years later. The complaint did not detail the alleged racism. In her decades at Kaiser, she unsuccessfully applied for hundreds of positions.

Plaintiff Shelby Stewart, at Kaiser for more than 14 years, resigned in 2020 after performing a director’s work as a business consultant and senior manager, without a director’s pay, the suit alleged. Her White, male supervisor promoted a White, female project manager a year before promoting Stewart, and never promoted the other two project managers on the team, both of whom were Black, the suit claimed. A White, female executive demoted Stewart while promoting an executive assistant to senior manager, the suit alleged.

Plaintiff Charleta Dabrowski remains employed at Kaiser after 15 years, and during that time as an operations specialist has done the work of an analyst without the appropriate pay, the suit claimed. “Despite her accomplishments, dedication, and work ethic, Kaiser has consistently denied Ms. Dabrowski the promotion or pay level that accurately reflects the managerial duties that she performs,” the suit alleged, adding that since late 2018 she was “discriminatorily denied” at least eight higher-level positions she applied for. “When her team’s manager role became vacant in 2010, 2011, and 2012, three non-Black men were appointed,” according to the suit filed in San Francisco County Superior Court.

Like Dabrowski, plaintiff Benedict Johnson, still employed at Kaiser after 14 years, spent his entire career as an operations specialist doing analyst-level work without an analyst’s pay, the suit claimed, and was passed over three times in favor of non-Black men when the manager job came up, the suit claimed.

Affected workers’ shares of the settlement money would be based mainly on salary and length of employment. Kaiser would also have to hire an independent expert to analyze its pay practices. If the expert finds Black workers are underpaid, Kaiser would adjust compensation and pay back employees accordingly.

For the administrative support and consulting services job categories, Kaiser would also have to detail qualifications for jobs and promotions, train managers in using approved criteria for promotions and implement an equity and inclusion training program for managers.

Kaiser’s statement said it last year launched a multi-year program to combat bias, racism and social injustice. “We hold ourselves accountable for living our values by strengthening our inclusive culture and expanding our work to address any disparities and their root causes,” Kaiser said. “This moment has given us the opportunity to accelerate the work already well underway to benefit, in particular, approximately 4,800 current and former Black and Latinx employees in California in the administrative support and consulting services job categories.”