discrimination

Article – Wal-Mart Class Action Gender Discrimination Case Holds

By Myron Curry, President and CEO of BusinessTrainingMedia.com
Copyright -2004

Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer and America’s single largest employer. It was, therefore, a noteworthy event in June 2004 when a federal judge expanded a lawsuit filed by six California women to a class action. The case has now mushroomed to cover 1.6 million women Wal-Mart workers, employed nationwide since 1988, making it, by far, the largest class action in U.S. history. This article looks at two questions: How will liability be determined? What can other employers learn?

In granting the case class action status, Judge Martin Jenkins indicated that Wal-Mart had for the most part failed to dispute the plaintiffs’ evidence that women were paid less than men in every region and in most job categories; that the salary gap widens over time even for employees hired into the same jobs; that women take longer to reach management positions; and that “the higher one looks in the organization, the lower the percentage of women.” Among other facts cited by the plaintiffs are that two-thirds of the company’s 1.2 million U.S. workers are women, but only one-third of all managers and only 14 percent of store managers are women. As a comparison, on average, 60 per cent of the managers in general merchandise stores are women. None of these facts in themselves prove that there was intentional, systematic bias, the judge declared, but they help to support “an inference that Wal-Mart engages in discriminatory practices.”

Wal-Mart’s defense is that the inequalities between its male and female employees resulted from factors other than unlawful discrimination. In such cases, employers typically argue that women were not interested in and/or not qualified for the higher paying jobs—defenses Wal-Mart has indicated it will use.

For the most part, the same team of plaintiffs’ lawyers and experts (see www.impactfund.org) who have brought other very large class action discrimination cases are involved in the Wal-Mart lawsuit. Several years ago, they represented plaintiffs in a gender discrimination class action against Home Depot, which the company eventually settled for $104.5 million and an agreement to make significant changes in its treatment of female employees. Like Wal-Mart, Home Depot argued that women were uninterested in and/or unqualified for the higher paid jobs. Although the Home Depot case never went to trial, the plaintiffs’ experts were ready to submit the following evidence to prove that prejudice was the real reason for the difference in pay and positions between men and women:

• · evidence that company decision-making processes fostered or permitted the use of hunches, intuitions, or feelings
• evidence that categorical opinions such as “women don’t want this kind of work” influenced decision making
• use of gender-associated stereotypes in evaluations (e.g., calling someone “a sweet person,” a term almost always used for women and not men)
• features of the organizational culture that allowed gender stereotypes to influence job assignments, training, or promotions
• an incentive and motivational system that failed to promote or reward bias-free decision-making
• census data comparisons showing that the number of women in better paid positions was less than would be expected from the available number of qualified women in the area labor pool
• statistical analysis of the company’s personnel data system to show gender-related disparities in the chances that a man and a woman hired at the same time with equal work experience, education, and skills would be assigned to certain jobs or be paid the same
• existence of gender-segregated job ladders or career paths Without doubt, the plaintiffs’ attorneys are now attempting to develop similar evidence, much of it depending on sophisticated statistical analyses, to prove gender discrimination at Wal-Mart.

Many knowledgeable observers predict that Wal-Mart, like Home Depot, Lucky Stores, Smith Barney, and a number of other prominent employers who have chosen to settle gender discrimination lawsuits—will eventually settle. But the company is famous for its tough stance in discrimination cases, and it remains to be seen how long it will litigate this one. It’s even possible it could choose to go to trial, if it can’t get the class action declaration reversed, but that seems unlikely. Very few class action cases ever go to trial, although both sides prepare their evidence as if there will be a trial.

my thoughts: in todays society are we not sappose to be all equal? is our society going back to when we were still very partiarchal, to when women were not considered “persons” discrimination is becoming a big thing weather its having more men succeed or something more “hurtful” people are becoming more and mre aware of it and yet nothing is done about it  why?

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