High court rules 1.4 million women are not a class

By Will Parry

With its 5-4 decision in the historic, decade-long Walmart discrimination case, the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority has gravely weakened the people’s right to address corporate injustice with a class-action lawsuit.

The court’s ruling was limited to the finding that Walmart women workers’ circumstances did not have enough in common to make them a class for the purposes of a lawsuit. The court did not address the charge of raw, corporation-wide gender discrimination.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, cited Walmart’s formal policy forbidding discrimination and its practice of granting local managers substantial discretion, which he argued resulted in varied pay and promotion practices in the company’s 4,500 stores.

The right of 1.5 million present and former women Walmart workers to back pay and to a gender-free opportunity for promotions was at stake in the case originally filed in the name of Walmart greeter Betty Dukes, a modest and courageous African American woman.

Having been denied the right to file a class action, it will now be difficult for the company’s female employees to pursue individual claims. The average wages lost for a member of the rejected class – around $1,100 a year – is too small a sum to give lawyers an incentive to prepare and pursue individual suits against a corporate behemoth.

Despite the difficulties, attorneys for the women predicted that many individual claims would be filed and that efforts would be made to construct one or more smaller groups that might meet the Supreme Court majority’s definition of a class.

The plaintiffs presented 130 sworn statements from women employees documenting specific instances of discrimination in pay, in promotions and in the work environment. Since the case was originally filed in 1999, more than 12,000 women Walmart employees have contacted the plaintiffs’ attorneys with issues arising from company practices.

This mass of evidence supported the conclusion, expressed by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her dissenting opinion, that “gender bias suffused Walmart’s corporate culture.” Ginsburg’s dissent was joined by the other two women justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Elia Kagan, as well as by Justice Stephen Breyer.

The outpouring of corporate support for Walmart during the court case is proof of its watershed importance. More than 20 major corporations, including Bank of America, Microsoft and GE, filed amicus briefs on the company’s behalf – in other words, in support of a corporation’s sovereign right to treat its women employees like second-class citizens

While legal action on behalf of Walmart’s women workers is expected to continue on a smaller scale, company labor relations policies are also being challenged by a growing movement within the ranks of the “associates,” as Walmart calls its employees.

At the company’s stores in many parts of the country, including the Puget Sound area, a movement is taking shape called “OUR Walmart,” which stands for “Organized and United for Respect at Walmart.” Demonstrating their seriousness, more than one hundred workers and supporters marched on the company’s Bentonville, Arkansas, headquarters June 20 to demand better treatment.

Karen Casey, a company senior vice president for labor relations, having met with the delegation and listened to their grievances, replied that “our cornerstone at Walmart is respect for the individual.”

“Well then,” responded Misty Tanner, an “associate” who had traveled from Seattle to take part in the protest, “that needs to drain down to the stores, because your store managers lost it.”

The OUR Walmart delegation said that if they don’t see results from their action they will be back.

Reacting to the Supreme Court decision, the National Organization for Women called on Congress to enact the Paycheck Fairness Act, “which would provide more effective remedies to victims of sex-based wage discrimination.”

“NOW also calls on Walmart to end its unconscionable resistance to employees’ efforts to form unions and bargain collectively over pay, benefits and other conditions of employment,” the statement added.

Indeed, if Walmart’s workers and their labor and community supporters can crack this brutal stronghold of anti-unionism, it could inspire a rebirth of militant unionism across the entire working class.