So, as you may have heard,
a divided Ninth Circuit voted to give the Dukes v. Walmart class action suit the go-ahead. With the largest plaintiff class ever,
Dukes is not the largest sexual discrimination suit in the history of the US, it's the largest class action suit in the history of the US as well. Of course, Walmart had hoped to quash the class action suit, which would have allowed it to use divide and conquer tactics to kill any individual lawsuits that popped up - now the retail giant faces a lawsuit that, if they lose, could cost them
billions.
It's good to see that Walmart's delaying tactics here may finally have come to an end - they've been dragging out the case since 2001, hoping to prevent the class from being certified. And hopefully, it will help shed some light on endemic sexual discrimination in the American labor market. While moves like the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act are helping, the problem is that the wage gap still remains, not to mention that one sees fewer women the higher one moves up the corporate ladder. Maybe this case will show people that the issue isn't with women, but with the corporations.
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But how would they know that it is systematic and not due to other factors?
With an employee base as big as Wal-mart's, you might be able to get some meaningful statistics.
If all 50,000 or however many women employed by Wal-mart are getting paid and promoted less than their male counterparts, it's kindof hard to blame it on individual circumstance.
Number of female employees, pay grades, promotion patterns, time off; that kind of stuff.
EDIT: Beat'd.
Interesting.
I'm a woman. I work for Wal-mart... I just got my yearly (not really but kinda) evaluation and I'm actually getting a slightly higher raise than normal.
Also, management is about half and half male and female in my store, and actually, in my old store too.
I dunno, I guess I don't really see it. I mean, I'm getting shit for wages, but so is everybody else in my store. I'm getting shit for hours, but so is everybody else.
But I don't think its gender related. Of course, I could be too far down on the chain to see it.
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Do you get paid more for working late nights or loading dock stuff? Did you notice a disparity between men and women working part-time vs. full-time?
I'm a cashier, so I get paid shit anyways and don't deal with the loading dock. But if I work past midnight or on sundays, I get paid extra.
And full-time/part-time disparity is more prevalent between employees who have been there longer and new hires. There are no new full-time positions anymore, everybody gets part-time and there's no way to get full-time unless you take over a promotion that requires full time hours. And again, in our store, the recent promotions have been almost equal (I say almost because there were only 3 positions open, 2 women and 1 man got promoted).
But then, the employee populace in my store is an older demographic (mostly retirement community) and a majority of female employees (old widows).
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*Clears throat*
*Adjusts Tie*
Fuck Wal-Mart
*Sits back down*
At the one I worked at this very clearly occurred, I hope they get reamed (and then they'll just fire X staff to make up the difference, weeee)
Totally limed for truth.
I hung out with the unloaders alot in my last store, and there were only 6 of them at most on any given night. Those guys worked their asses off, hurt, sick, you name it, they worked it.
The store I'm at now, we actually have a decent sized crew of 12 or 13 unloaders. I rarely see them doing anything other than they're jobs, but then, I'm a cashier and not a floor associate so I see alot less now than I used to.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not defending wal-mart as a whole, I'm just giving what I see.
And yeah, the unloaders get shit on. that I will agree with completely.
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I mean, for a class action suit to stick, it has to be proven that discrimination was a vast company-wide instituted policy. Instead, what I bet we'll find is a company from Arkansas guilty of hiring people in predominantly poor rural communities who bring along with them the same values of those areas; namely, women need to be in the kitchen and the like.
Cultural prejudice != systematic discrimination.
This is especially true for farm families, where everybody works from dawn till dusk, female or male. Hell, our head cheerleader worked in the tobacco fields IIRC.
You know what I mean. It's a Southern company; the South is predominantly Baptist and non-denom, both of which are heavy into defining gender roles.
It's a company with over 8400 storefronts and over 2.1 million employees, and largely based in small rural communities.
Good luck with that.
It's not exactly like you're pulling from the best talent pool, anyway. I'd guess most people looking for long-term employment at a place like Wal-Mart aren't going to represent the best of a progressive liberal workforce.
If what you're describing is a possible confound, then look at whether any pay disparity trends are uniform between regions.
Man, if I were a statistician, the data mining opportunities for this lawsuit alone would make me drool with anticipation.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I hate to break it to you but the size of the company is irrelevant. You have a clear hierarchical command structure, and those at the top I'm certain must have seen the data showing this disparity and have known about this lawsuit for some time. If a department manager is being a sexist douche, then its an assistant managers job to fix it, if the AM is a douche its the SM's job to fix it. If the SM is being a douche, its the DM's job, then the RM's, also there's various levels of human resources along the way.
Anyone who's worked at wal-mart can tell you that in their computer system they have an elaborate system that keeps track of every single statistic involving the company down to individual stores. A store employee can't see things like payroll records, but if you can with a few clicks get a simple statistical analysis on what brands of soap do better than others, I'm sure those at the top are aware of something this major.
I would say more than that, a breakdown between store types and economic profiles of store locations.
Fer example, I have three Wal-Mart stores in my region. Two are in the significantly lower income parts of town, and the stores reflect that: dirty, scattered, filled with POWs. One is in the very ritzy upper-class neighborhood, and instead of being a cinder-block hulk sandwiched between stripmalls, it's a glass-and-steel structure that has a full deli counter with imported foods, a sushi bar, a custom artisan bakery, and laminate wood flooring. It sells patio furniture that costs over $1000.
I would wager the disparate stores have similarly disparate pay and hiring practices. I think, at least, the demography should be looked at.
And that somehow magically excuses sex discrimination?
No, but it does change the argument from "systemic abuse of employees" to "yokels acting like yokels, here and there a bit."
I lose sleep wondering how you keep your wrists from getting bloody and raw from all that wringing, AH. Your stewardship of society's moral compass is commendable and likely very tiring.
Personally I just am not entirely sure I'm ok with attacking Wal-mart for a problem of the nation. That seems a little scape-goat-y.
Ross does have a point that sex discrimination that reflects the biases inherent in the surrounding community is of a wholly different caliber than one that does not. Neither is excusable, of course, but would affect exactly how much culpability Walmart has.
Mostly, though, I'm still salivating over the inevitable data buffet.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Because "southerners being southerners" isn't an excuse to break the law.
Look at one point black people couldn't eat at white restaurants, and as soon as the law was changed it didn't vanish overnight. It took many years of hard enforcement - but there are very few restaurants today that would dare attempt to kick a patron out because he's black, no matter how the owner or staff feel. This is a far less serious (imo) issue than that, but it has the same solution: enforcement.
Being that wal-mart is a large multi tiered organization with phenomenal internal data collection methods, how the hell hard would it be for them to actually police this issue?
This, basically.
I just personally don't think Wal-Mart Corporate cares enough to discriminate against people as a written or implied policy. They've had enough legal bullshit thrown at them over the years that I'd be extremely surprised if they would be so stupid to maintain a policy that puts them in so much liability for no reasonable gain.
Again, it's a company largely employed by minimally-educated or uneducated shift laborers, largely stationed in low-income and rural communities.
Honestly, I'd be surprised if the statistics showed them to be a bastion of progressiveness. They certainly don't have the model for it.
And I would be ok going after the southerners. But as a general company, I have a hard time believing that there really is that much the brass in Wal-mart HQ could do to stop that, especially with how big Wal-mart is.
By all means, go after the specific branches. By all means go after the immediate employers. I just, again, don't know if I'm ok with Wal-mart being singled out for being entirely with the national average, unless the brass were specifically giving out orders to pay women less, or there was a problem from the main company that wasn't just the branches.
I don't know. However hard it would be to police the actions of 8400 stores, and more employees than the entire populations of Philadelphia and San Francisco, combined.
It's the "banality of evil" issue. Is Walmart actively discriminating? Probably not. But at the same time, they're not enforcing EEO regs when their lower rung managers engage in it. And I think they should be held liable for that, because they have an obligation to not let that happen.
And lets not forget that Dukes has a potential plaintiff class of over 1 million people. That's a full 1/300th or thereabouts of the US.
The "why bother" approach.
Delicious!
Hmm. I find that a questionable claim.
One in every 150 people are disgruntled Wal-Mart employees?
Can I assume you're all for massive deportation efforts for all 20 million+ illegal immigrants?
Send out a few emails outlining a company-wide policy to the contrary. Put up a few motivational posters saying that gender/race don't matter in the "wall-mart" family. Fire a few managers that break the policy deliberatly and give bad preformance reviews to those that do it accidentaly.
None of these things would cost all that much or take much time. Its seems Wall-mart didn't even do that.
Excellent topic change.
OR TO BE MORE CONSTRUCTIVE: there's a positive systemic effect to holding large companies responsible for the hiring practices of their branches. It is also just about the only way to enforce sex discrimination law.
I've gone back and forth with using this awful analogy, but I'm going to go ahead and do it now:
I could give directions, and I could go over things, but ultimately it came down to two things: My player had to lock herself into a room and woodshed, and my vocalist had to concentrate and count. I told them what was important, I scheduled rehearsals, I went over problem spots, I directed like crazy. The one possible way I could've helped is if I pulled aside my player and took her into a practice room and basically instructed a specific practice(And let's face it there are other things I would've done in a room with.... but I digress). The vocalist? Don't know if there is anything more I could've done to help.
Anyways, my duties as assigned were not supervising instrumentalists practicing. That would've been a massive time commitment that I'm not sure I could've even been able to put up.
Should I have been held responsible for any shoddy work on their part? I was essentially management, I was the brass, I was the HQ, as it were, but ultimately it wasn't my responsibility to do their work.
Now, I don't know if Wal-mart HQ had directives out saying "HEY PAY WOMEN LESS", but if they did a reasonable amount of work towards having no gender discrimination, and the regional branches just ignored it, without necessarily giving responses to HQ saying "HEY WE DON'T LIKE THEM WEAK WOMEN FOLK"... Is it really the companies fault? It's less "Why bother" and more "If they're doing their job and the regional stores aren't listening, why's it their fault"
Now, if Wal-Mart HQ knows there's gender discrimination going on and gives a subtle wink to the regional branches... well that's a different story.