Wal-Mart Sex Discrimination Lawsuit

The employees were getting paid a low hourly wage and they were not receiving any benefits. Sam Walton was chasing after power, it might not have been the power of having money, but making sure whenever someone talked about him in a positive way. Employers such as Walton are not generous and they are more than harmful when they stifle activism; for example “[w]hen workers tried to join unions and Wal-Mart ruthlessly crushed them, firing anyone foolish enough to speak out”(Packer,354). This example shows how the employees were powerless while working at Wal-Mart. Consequently, Wal-Mart was not the only company. If the Wal-Mart’s corporate heard anything about any worker wanting to receive more benefits about what was actually happening they would quickly act upon that and fire the employee. In addition, the power that corporate would show when other workers saw this would prevent any further action. While the workforce might be powerless, at least they are protected from the streets. On the other hand, women living in the ghetto who do things for safety is a source of power for them. In both of these situations, they are doing more harm than justice. Joan Morgan explains the struggle that takes place in the black community and more so in the black women’s community. Both groups, the low paying employees and African-American women are born to fail, but sadly either one are doing anything to try changing this problem and allows it to continue. The employees at

Discrimination continues to run rampant throughout organizations in both the United States and worldwide. The Supreme Court case, Dukes vs. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., dealt with 1.5 million current and former female Wal-Mart employees that claim that they had been a victim of gender discrimination. The ensuing pages will discuss the specific issues that the plaintiffs encountered, followed by suggestions from a human resource manager’s stand point in rectifying adverse impact within the Wal-Mart organization.

The amount of money which the employees are receiving seems considerably miniscule compared to the revenue which the heads of Walmart are receiving. Three members of the Walton family have a net worth of 144.7 billion dollars, receiving 3.4 billion in revenue a year each, and the CEO, Doug McMillon, receives 25.6 million in revenue while the store employees receive 9-15 dollars an hour, and factory workers receive less than a dollar a day. Employees are provided with unaffordable health care benefits, which would show Walmart wants to receive more from their employees rather than spend more on their employees. This just shows Walmart’s excessive need for profit, even though they receive 485 billion dollars in annual sales. Because of the amount of power that Walmart holds in governments and communities, the attempt to compete with them would be quite difficult. Walmart is a monopoly, which goes to show how capitalism drives them forward. The main drawback of the extreme capitalism of Walmart is that people become so infatuated with materialistic items that they do not notice how they affect other people’s lives; people begin to prefer profit rather than other people’s well-being and safety. For example, as stated before, Walmart does not seem to care about the safety of the factory workers as long as they get their products for a cheap

While researching this topic, so many things were found to be eye opening. One in which is the way that Wal-Mart conducted themselves when they had to manage their employees. How they dealt with promoting them and demoting them. Last year Wal-Mart started a new management style and wanted to promote more family time and create a less workload on each of the managers and employees. Therefore, they changed the schedule to becoming 3 days on and 3 days off which created more room for managers to fall into the field. Managers would be thrown into the position of an area of the store they knew nothing about and expected to understand each thing and help customers find exactly what they

The case Mitchell, et al. v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Inc. was filed in the courts for gender discrimination of Stella Mitchell and other women employed at MetLife Inc. Met Life denied female sales representatives that were qualified to obtain higher levels of the agency. The company also allegedly denied access to training, development resources and assignments. (Goldstein, Mitchell, et al. v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Inc., 2000) Met Life settles with payments resulting of $5,000,000 to the plaintiffs and $5,000,000 in programs.

Consequently, this has potential implications for the investment on the next generation; if parents view daughters as less likely to earn market wages or take paid work, they may be less inclined to invest in their education, which is woman’s fastest route out of poverty. Also, in a job market dominated by men who monopolize the most important positions, the male faction generally retains the opportunities for success, for advancement or for higher wages. In fact, a recent class action lawsuit filed on behalf of 1.6 million women employed by Wal-Mart stores alleges the retailer’s sexual discrimination has led to women losing out on pay, promotions and other advances; women are paid less than men in every department of the store. According to the study named in the lawsuit, two-thirds of Wal-Mart’s employees are female and less than one-third of its managers are female Until recently, social development, by design has guaranteed women limited growth in the employment ranks by the standard curriculum path recommended for the female gender; typical high school and junior colleges required home economics and other domestic-related courses to be completed by female students. Thus, the woman high school or junior college graduate enters the world without adequate training to compete in the business world beyond basic trade or “blue collar” worker positions.

The women in this case felt discomfort when they felt mistreated from their male managers in the form of sexism along with unfair pay and lack of promotions. In this case, a woman was told to doll up and to wear makeup in order to advance which is a perfect example of one’s boundaries being pushed while making them feel uncomfortable. The next conflict event was annoyance. According to the Huffington Post article regarding the case, there was a significant difference between the level of experience between male and female workers along with their opportunity for promotions. The male workers with less experience got promotions compared to the female workers with years of experience and positive performance reviews. Male workers were also paid more compared to their female coworkers. Being passed over for jobs was evident to the women identified in this case which lead to the awareness of gender discrimination, the next conflict event, in a diverse workplace with men and women with their only similarity being that they are Wal-Mart employees. The awareness of gender discrimination faced by thousands of female employees led to conflict, the last conflict event where a class-action lawsuit was filed against Wal-Mart despite them saying that they were a diversity encouraging, fair treatment, and nondiscriminatory company (Shapiro,

I enjoyed reading at your post. I agree that Wal-Mart has been trying to improve some aspects of the company. I hope I did not overlooked the track number you selected for this company, but in my opinion Wal-Mart appears to fall under track 1 due to the nature of its business and because in the past has been involved in many controversies. you and our classmate Jim Pantano (post below), provided some good examples. In addition, to those controversies, Wal-Mart has been accused of discrimination against minorities, who face intimidation, low pay and unsafe working condition. Between 2001 and 2008, 4500 black Afro-American truck drivers filed against Wal-Mart for racial discrimination because they were turned away in disproportionate

In addition, Olsson in her article suggests that Walmart is over work their employees. By doing so, Olsson shows how Walmart employees struggle to keep their job, even when they over work. Moreover, Olsson forms a definite picture that shows us how Walmart employees need their job, despite their low wages and difficult to get promoted. Olsson state, “to get the job done, according to the dozens of employee lawsuits filed against the company, Wal-Mart routinely forces employees to work overtime without pay” (4). In short, Olsson claims that Walmart employees work overtime all the time but still don’t getting paid for it, and former employees that now suing Walmart declare those allegations. Furthermore, Olsson uses of an example that shows that

The six women who sued Wal-Mart had physical proof and evidence of the discrimination laid upon them. Some of the evidence were found in the employees’ records whereby Richard Drogin, a statistical expert found out that employees in Wal-Mart are divided into two main groups: hourly employees who occupied the lower levels and salaried manager who occupied the higher levels. Since Wal-Mart promotes predominantly from within, workers typically progress from being an upper hourly employee to management trainee, to store manager or assistant manager, and finally to the district, regional or cooperate manager. Compensation increases from one level to another. In 2001, salaried managers made about $50,000 a year while hourly employees made $18,000.

Nineteen years after her first day at Goodyear, Lilly received a notice revealing she was making less per year than the men that were in her position. According to Stout, Tower, & Alkadry (2015), “The “glass ceiling” is the pattern of women entering and remaining in the lower ranks of an organization due to slower career progression [..]”. This is an example of the glass-ceiling workforce. Finding out this information, Lilly became overwhelmed. She soon filed a sex discrimination case against the Good Year Company. This case went all the way to the Supreme Court in which she lost because the court ruled that she should have filed the suit 180 days of first unequal paycheck. This was very unfair knowing that she had no way of knowing that.

Walmart, the world’s largest retailer and private employer, has established a highly profitable business centered on a low-cost strategy that utilizes logistical efficiencies to create a competitive advantage. Yet, to maintain this low-cost strategy, Walmart has engaged in ethically questionable practices, including gender discrimination in promotion and pay. While the Supreme Court recently ruled against class certification of 1.5 million women in the Dukes v. Walmart case due to a lack of proof that Walmart operated under a “general policy of discrimination”, overwhelming evidence demonstrates that gender discrimination is a persistent problem rooted in the culture of Walmart, despite gender-neutral policies (Biskupic, 2011).

Regardless of the outcome of such lawsuits, this type of negative attention can be damaging to Wal-Mart 's external reputation and internal morale. Terrence, Harding, and Kelly (2015) found that “other things being equal, women were paid less than men in comparable positions. Second, women received fewer promotions to management positions than men”. As a result, judges of the ninth circuit agreed that there was a nexus “between the subjective decision making of Wal-Mart managers and the evidence of pay and promotion disparity. The court also found that plaintiffs showed a common pattern of discrimination resulting from a uniform management structure, a strong centralized corporate culture, and gender disparity in every domestic region of Wal-Mart” (Terrence, Harding, and Kelly, 2015). This kind of issue leads to high indemnifications to the affected classes which distresses Wal-Mart finances.

In the United States Walmart effects negatively retail worker wages as well as retail employment. In addition, University of California researchers found that workers in Walmart earn on average 12.4 % less than retail workers as a whole (UNI Global Union, 2012). Walmart’s workers demonstrated thier dissatisfaction with working conditions and low wages by protesting on Black Friday 2012, which is the day the company is making the biggest profit. Walmart workers stood up and more than 1,000 demonstrations in a hundreds encouraging Walmart to act ethicaly towards them. For workers protesting it was a huge risk as they are oficially not protected by any labour union (Progress, 2012). Another evidence that Walmart treats its employees unfairly are discrimination claims. Women workers in California pursue discrimination claims saying that Walmart systematically treats them unfairly. According to women workers retail giant denied to pay raises and promotions due to gender bias (Levine & Gupta, 2011).

In this article about the courageous Betty Dukes and the number of women behind her, we see how the world’s “Super Store” Wal-Mart has many cases of sexual discrimination (and all other forms of discrimination as well.) We see a false hope, so to say with Wal-Mart’s advertisements. Things are often too good to be true, which is where Betty Dukes’ story comes into play and is an important lesson to many women and others who are being discriminated against. Before reading this article, I never believed in the pay gap or denial of growth/promotion against women. Even though there was no factual information on the pay gap, they did mention the percentage of women associates, 72%. Whereas only 34% of manager positions are held