Sixteen current and former African-American employees of Merrill Lynch have joined a race discrimination lawsuit first filed a year ago. ...

Sixteen current and former African-American employees of Merrill Lynch have joined a race discrimination lawsuit first filed a year ago. The new lead plaintiffs include current and former broker trainees and financial advisors who allege Merrill discriminated in hiring, promoting and compensating African-Americans. "Merrill Lynch has engaged, and continues to engage, in systemic and pervasive racial discrimination against African-Americans," says the suit, which was filed at a federal district court in Chicago. "Merrill Lynch's discriminatory treatment of African-Americans is evidenced in part by the low representation and high attrition rates of African-Americans." The amended suit alleges that Merrill doesn't value African-American brokers, because it believes they don't have as much access to wealth as white brokers and will not bring in as many wealthy clients. But in an effort to improve diversity, Merrill this year began basing part of its branch managers' compensation directly on their success in creating a diverse workplace. The suit claims that Merrill has no African-American brokers in about 25 states when the original case was filed and that for the past seven years, 755 of Merrill's black broker trainees were forced to leave the firm before completing the program because of discrimination. Merrill, with more than 15,700 brokers, has said that as of June 30 it employed 344 African-American brokers in 25 states and that exceptions include states such as Wyoming, North Dakota, Idaho and Maine that have very low populations of African-Americans.