The corporate culture of American super-chains has always been under intense scrutiny by watchdog groups across the country. Over the last decade the retail giant, Wal-Mart has been accused of paying too little to its employees, has faced allegations of sexism, has been excoriated for the role it plays in cheap imports, and been blamed for the disappearance of mom and pop stores.
And now Wal-Mart is facing the largest class action suit in US. History.
The court's nine justices are now in the process of deciding whether or not lawyers representing potentially more than a million women employed by Wal-Mart, can bring a class-action sex-discrimination lawsuit against it. At issue is if the plaintiffs have satisfied federal class-action rules. If this is determined to be the case, that means that around 1.5 million women, or 1 percent of all American females, could join in the suit.
Wal-Mart argues that the company is too large and spread out for its female employees to have enough in common to be considered a class.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs cite statistics showing that women make up 80 percent of Wal-Mart's hourly workers, but only a third of its managers. Women make an average of $1,000 a year less than men, and more than 100 said in affidavits that they were told men were paid more because they had families to support.
Women also claimed they were called “Janey Qs,” and a worker complained that her male manager told her to “doll up.”
The origins of the case began in 2001, when Betty Dukes, a Wal-Mart greeter at a store in Pittsburg, California, and five female employees filed a lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco, accusing the retailer of discriminating against its female employees by paying them less than men and giving them fewer promotions.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of June.
Photo by Douglas C. Pizac
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