Women workers sue Wal-Mart:
'Pay the billion you owe us'
By Mary Owen
The glass ceiling at Wal-Mart showed cracks
last month when a sex discrimination lawsuit by six California
women who work or have worked for the $256 billion retail giant
received class action status. In a case that began last year,
the workers charged Wal-Mart with systematically discriminating
against women in pay and promotions.
Two thirds of Wal-Mart's 1.2 million U.S. workers are
women.
On June 22, U.S. District Court Judge Martin Jenkins
certified the gender-bias lawsuit, Dukes v. Wal-Mart, to cover
more than 1.6 million current and former female employees of
Wal-Mart's 3,586 U.S. retail stores back to Dec. 26, 1998. The
ruling includes its discount stores, super centers,
neighborhood stores and Sam's Clubs.
"I'm in this for the long haul. I have no fear in my spirit
at all of Wal-Mart," lead plaintiff Betty Dukes told the New
York Times. (June 23) Dukes, a 54-year-old African-American
woman and an ordained Missionary Baptist minister, decided to
take action after seeing men promoted over her during 10 years
at Wal-Mart in Pittsburgh, Calif.
The workers' lawyers say this is the biggest class action
ever certified against a private employer. The historic legal
action by women workers could force Wal-Mart to award more than
$1 billion in back pay alone--the difference between what
Wal-Mart underpaid the women and what they should have earned
since 1998.
Systematic gender bias
Statistics supporting the gender-bias lawsuit--available at
www.walmartclass. com and www.walmartvswomen.com--show a
systematic pattern of discrimination by Wal-Mart against women
workers.
Women were regularly paid less than men for the same
work--from 5 to 15 percent less in similar positions. Although
65 percent of Wal-Mart's hourly workers are women, only
one-third of its managers are female--well below industry
norms. Men hold 90 percent of Wal-Mart store manager
positions.
Wal-Mart tried to argue that it had no national policy
against women. But expert testimony in the case showed
gender-based wage disparities exist in every region in which
Wal-Mart operates.
Wal-Mart's practices are so anti-woman that the National
Organization for Women dubbed Wal-Mart its "Merchant of Shame"
in its Women Friendly Work place campaign in 2002.
(www.now.org)
Labor, women and communities unite
The gender-bias class action lawsuit comes on the heels of a
number of labor and community campaigns and legal actions
against the anti-union behemoth.
Wal-Mart pays workers a miserly $8 an hour on
average--without benefits--while topping the Fortune 500 as the
biggest private employer in the United States.
In February, a Portland, Ore., federal jury found that
Wal-Mart owed 70 store managers overtime pay after forcing them
to clock out and then work for free. Similar cases are pending
in 31 states.
Federal raids last year, which forced hundreds of
undocumented workers from their jobs, revealed that Wal-Mart
used cleaning subcontractors that exploited immigrant
workers.
The Food and Commercial Workers union is continuing efforts
to organize Wal-Mart workers in the United States and
Canada--where workers at a Wey burn, Saskatchewan, Wal-Mart
recently signed up to join the union.
"An organized voice for workers is the solution for the
problems--from low pay to inadequate health care, from high
turnover to discrimination--at Wal-Mart. The Dukes case is an
inspiration for all other Wal-Mart workers that, acting
together, they, too, can bring change to the work place," said
Food and Commercial Workers President Joe Hansen.
The union also joined community groups in Chicago and in
Inglewood, Calif., to prevent Wal-Mart from setting up
low-wage, big-box stores in those cities. And it is publicizing
the women's gender-bias case on its web site at
www.ufcw.org.
In June the Service Employees union joined the fight,
pledging $1 million at its annual convention to "work with
national and local groups to pressure Wal-Mart to improve wages
and working conditions and to be a better neighbor."
Meanwhile, the gender-bias case against Wal-Mart is making
an impact on working-class shoppers like Debra Enah of
Minneapolis-St. Paul. "I don't want to be part of a store that
doesn't have a heart for women," she told the Star Tribune.
"Women do most of the shopping here. They could lose a great
deal of customers."
Reprinted from the July 15, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
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