A Campbell Soup executive was heard in an audio recording as he bashed the company’s products and made derogatory comments about some of the employees. In the recording, the Campbell Soup Company vice president mocked “poor people” who buy the product and referred to his Indian coworkers as “idiots,” the New York Post reported. He also admitted to being high when he comes to work.
Who recorded the Campbell Soup executive who made offensive remarks?
Robert Garza, an employee who works at the company’s headquarters in Camden, New Jersey, caught the vice president’s comments on recording. According to the New York Post, Garza said he instinctively started recording when he went to see Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer Martin Bally for a salary meeting in November 2024. Garza said he had a gut feeling that “something wasn’t right with Martin” as the meeting started.
“We have s**t for f**king poor people. Who buys our s**t? I don’t buy Campbell’s products barely anymore,” Bally said in the recording, per the Post. “It’s not healthy now that I know what the f**k’s in it.”
What happened to Robert Garza after he reported Campbell Soup vice president Martin Bally?
Garza said he was fired from the company after he reported the comments he heard during the meeting with Bally. In a lawsuit he filed against the company after being fired, Garza said he was let go in retaliation for reporting the recording. The terminated employee also said the company has a racially hostile work environment, and they didn’t respect his rights.
Per the lawsuit, Garza didn’t get a follow-up from human resources after he reported Bally. He was fired 20 days after speaking out about Bally’s comments, the lawsuit stated, per the Post.
“He reached out to his supervisor and told the supervisor what Martin was saying, and then out of nowhere, my client was fired,” Garza’s attorney, Zachary Runyan, told Local 4. “He was really sticking up for other people. He went to his boss and said, ‘Martin is saying this about Indian coworkers we have, he’s saying this about people who buy our food — who keep our company open, and I don’t think that should be allowed.’ And the response to Robert sticking up for other people is that he gets fired, which is ridiculous.”
According to Garza’s lawsuit, Bally described the company’s food as “Bioengineered meat” and said he doesn’t “wanna eat a piece of chicken that came from a 3-D printer.” The complaint adds that Bally made racist comments about his colleagues, saying “f**king Indians don’t know a f**king thing” and “they couldn’t think for their f**king selves.”
According to the Post, a Campbell’s spokesperson said Bally is “temporarily on leave while we conduct an investigation.”