Wal-Mart Vs. Women In The Workplace
Tuesday, June 22, 2004SUSIE GHARIB: The largest private employer in the world is now a defendant in the largest discrimination lawsuit in U.S. history. A federal judge has ruled that a lawsuit charging Wal-Mart stores discriminated against female employees can proceed as a class-action case. The ruling covers more than 1.5 million current and former workers of the retail giant. Darren Gersh reports.
DARREN GERSH, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: The lawsuit charges Wal-Mart pays women less than men and denies or delays their promotions. In a videotaped statement, one of the six women who originally brought the case against America`s largest employer says she was told to: "Blow the cobwebs off her makeup, and doll up," if she wanted to move up.
CHRISTINE KWAPNOWSKI, WAL-MART PLAINTIFF: Men would get promoted. I would ask, how come they got promoted? And they would tell me, I have a -- or that the men have a family to support, and I basically would just have to tell them, I, too, have a family to support, and that would be about the end of the conversation.
GERSH: The centerpiece of the case is statistical evidence presented by the plaintiff`s based on Wal-Mart payroll data that shows the retailer paid women on average 5 to 15 percent less than men doing the same work with the same seniority. And while two-thirds of Wal-Mart`s hourly workers are women, they make up just 14 percent of top managers. Plaintiffs` attorneys say they interviewed women from across the country who heard the same thing from Wal-Mart.
JOSEPH SELLERS, PLAINTIFF`S ATTY., COHEN, MILSTEIN, HAUSFELD & TOLL: Women don`t belong in management. Women can`t manage men. Women should be paid less than men because men have families to support. Statements like that were told to many, many women and that`s in the record.
GERSH: Without ruling on the merits, a federal district court found there was enough evidence to allow the case to go forward, representing 1.6 million women who are former or current Wal-Mart employees. The judge seemed unimpressed by Wal-Mart`s own statistics that found no discrimination based on pay within store work groups. Wal-Mart recently revamped its pay policy for hourly workers. After speaking at an anti-trust conference in Washington today, Wal-Mart Chairman S. Robson Walton said the company strongly disagrees with the judge`s decision.
S. ROBSON WALTON, CHAIRMAN, WAL-MART STORES: Certainly it`s a concern, but we think this will be reversed on appeal.
GERSH: If the case goes forward it may take years to resolve, leaving a huge liability hanging over Wal-Mart.
JOAN WILLIAMS, PROF., AMERICAN UNIV., COLLEGE OF LAW: You have the largest class that has ever been certified in the United States against the largest private employer in the United States, and that means that damages could potentially get very steep, very fast.
GERSH: Plaintiffs` lawyers haven`t made a precise estimate, but they say this case, if successful, could easily cost Wal-Mart more than a billion dollars in back pay, with billions more possible in punitive damages. Darren Gersh, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Washington.
