By Rap Lewis
Nine years after it was filed, the largest employment discrimination suit in U.S. history, affecting more than one million women currently or formerly employed by Wal-Mart, is headed for the Supreme Court.
If the Supreme Court accepts the case, it will decide, not whether discrimination occurred, but whether the women can sue as a class, rather than being compelled to sue as individuals or in small groups. The company argues that employees charging discrimination should sue one at a time
Brad Seligman, an attorney for the women, challenged Wal-Mart’s position.
“The ruling upholding the class in this case is well within the mainstream that courts at all levels have recognized for decades,” Seligman said.
“Only the size of the case is unusual, and that is a product of Wal-Mart’s size and the breadth of the discrimination we documented. There is no ‘too big to be liable’ exception in civil rights laws.”
In April, the federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth District in San Francisco ruled 6-5 that the suit could proceed as a class action. The company appealed. If the Supreme Court agrees with the appeals court majority, the case could provide judicial grounds for similar class actions in the future. If the Supreme Court rejects Wal-Mart’s position, the case will revert for trial as a class action before U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker.
If the pattern of discrimination is established in Judge Walker’s court, Wal-Mart could be confronted with $1 billion or more in damages, Steven Greenhouse reported in The New York Times. The women are seeking damages for every year since 1997.
The suit, Dukes v. Wal-Mart, gets its name from Betty Dukes, a spunky Wal-Mart greeter who experienced years of frustration on the job, culminating in an argument with managers that led to a humiliating demotion and a pay cut. In 2001, Dukes and six other women filed the class action suit that is now before the Supreme Court.
When the lawsuit was filed, Dukes was being paid $8.44 an hour, despite nine years of service. When she began being covered in the media, Wal-Mart raised her pay nearly 50% within a year.
Dukes’ lawsuit alleges that Wal-Mart has violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which made it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of race, creed or gender. It charges that the company systemically pays women less than their male counterparts and promotes men more rapidly than women.
Experts retained by the plaintiffs said they found such patterns of discrimination at all 46 Wal-Mart regions.
It was not the first time discrimination was an issue. As early as 1995, Wal-Mart itself hired a major law firm to explore its vulnerability to such a lawsuit. The law firm found wide gender disparities in pay and promotion at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores and urged the company to take remedial measures.
The law firm’s findings were similar to those found years later by the plaintiffs’ main expert, Richard Drogin, an emeritus statistics professor at California State University, who examined payroll data from 1996 to 2002.
Drogin found that among hourly workers in 2001, women earned about $1,100 a year less than men. Among salaried workers, he found that women earned $14,500 less than men. He also found that in 2001, 65% of Wal-Mart’s workforce was female, compared with only 33% of its managers.
Showing posts with label sex discrimination. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sex discrimination. Show all posts
Friday, October 1, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Robbing each working woman of $2 million
By Edie Koch
Although the global recession has had serious impact on working men and women alike, women in the United States and throughout the world have suffered most because of long-standing discrimination.
At first, the recession was felt in work done primarily by men, such as finance, manufacturing and construction. Now, however, the impact has shifted to other areas of work, including service work, where women generally are dominant. Of course, when men lose their jobs, women have to support their families. That is a very real burden for women. Although they do essentially the same work as men, or the equivalent of it, women in all countries earn substantially less than men, typically 30% to 40% less. In the United States, women average only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men.
The pay gap exists, in part, because we still find many more women than men taking up low paying jobs either because this is the only type of job made available or because they need to find employment that allows them to balance work and family responsibilities. This is usually not the case for men.
Not only in the U.S. but everywhere, we need equal treatment for working women. We need to pay women the same, and treat them the same, as men doing comparable work. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 has never delivered on its promise to guarantee women equal treatment on the job. The long-stalled Paycheck Fairness Act should be enacted to close loopholes in the Equal Pay Act that have made it easy for employers to discriminate against women in pay and other work issues.
The New Center for American Progress (CAP) estimates that if US women were granted equal pay, they could each earn as much as $2 million more over the whole of their working lives. It’s estimated as well that equal pay would reduce the number of families living in poverty by as much as half.
In addition to paycheck fairness, the CAP report called for worldwide updating of basic labor standards “to recognize that most workers have family responsibilities and need predictable and flexible work schedules, family and medical leaves and paid sick days.” Such standards would ensure that women “who stay employed to support their families” won’t end up unemployed because of “family-work conflicts.”
A recent poll cited in the CAP report showed that “a large majority of Americans support new, more family-friendly workplace policies.” Eight-five percent said, “Businesses that fail to adapt to the needs of modern families risk losing good workers.” Businesses that fail to adapt will be furthering the mistreatment of working women that’s gone virtually unchecked for far too many years. No matter what the recession or its end brings, we will not have a truly healthy economy until working women are guaranteed their full rights. Amen to that!
Although the global recession has had serious impact on working men and women alike, women in the United States and throughout the world have suffered most because of long-standing discrimination.
At first, the recession was felt in work done primarily by men, such as finance, manufacturing and construction. Now, however, the impact has shifted to other areas of work, including service work, where women generally are dominant. Of course, when men lose their jobs, women have to support their families. That is a very real burden for women. Although they do essentially the same work as men, or the equivalent of it, women in all countries earn substantially less than men, typically 30% to 40% less. In the United States, women average only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men.
The pay gap exists, in part, because we still find many more women than men taking up low paying jobs either because this is the only type of job made available or because they need to find employment that allows them to balance work and family responsibilities. This is usually not the case for men.
Not only in the U.S. but everywhere, we need equal treatment for working women. We need to pay women the same, and treat them the same, as men doing comparable work. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 has never delivered on its promise to guarantee women equal treatment on the job. The long-stalled Paycheck Fairness Act should be enacted to close loopholes in the Equal Pay Act that have made it easy for employers to discriminate against women in pay and other work issues.
The New Center for American Progress (CAP) estimates that if US women were granted equal pay, they could each earn as much as $2 million more over the whole of their working lives. It’s estimated as well that equal pay would reduce the number of families living in poverty by as much as half.
In addition to paycheck fairness, the CAP report called for worldwide updating of basic labor standards “to recognize that most workers have family responsibilities and need predictable and flexible work schedules, family and medical leaves and paid sick days.” Such standards would ensure that women “who stay employed to support their families” won’t end up unemployed because of “family-work conflicts.”
A recent poll cited in the CAP report showed that “a large majority of Americans support new, more family-friendly workplace policies.” Eight-five percent said, “Businesses that fail to adapt to the needs of modern families risk losing good workers.” Businesses that fail to adapt will be furthering the mistreatment of working women that’s gone virtually unchecked for far too many years. No matter what the recession or its end brings, we will not have a truly healthy economy until working women are guaranteed their full rights. Amen to that!
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