Employment Discrimination at Wal-Mart
Foundation of the Study
This study examines the legislative and judicial climate that enables corporations like Wal-Mart to engage in practices that violate workers' rights. The popular consensus is that Wal-Mart, the largest retail store in the United States, displays an inordinate disregard for the human dignity and morale of its employees and, despite continual litigation, continues to blatantly violate the legal rights of its employees. Wal-Mart faces charges of violating The Federal Fair Labor Standards Act (2011) by asking management to adjust time sheets so that overtime will not need to be paid, and so that all employees will work under the hourly limit required by the union in order to obtain membership. Employees were insured, without their knowledge, against their death by Wal-Mart. The company was named beneficiary; following death of an employee, the entire benefit amount was retained by the corporation. Not a single cent was offered to the family members of the deceased.
Wal-Mart has deep pockets and little regard for lawsuits. The Human Rights Watch (2011) said that Wal-Mart employs strategies that are illegal, patently violating employees' rights. Wal-Mart is alleged to purchase clothing and other cheap items from shops in foreign countries where few safeguards for workers exist. A television broadcast showed Wal-Mart transacting business with a shop that employs children to make clothing (Sellers, 2005). Fair Labor Standards lawsuits have been filed in many states, some of which have been settled to avoid encouraging similar action in other states. Many women employees of Wal-Mart have filed complaints of sexual discrimination, citing incidences of unequal pay, blocked opportunities for promotion, and grievance policies that lead to harsher treatment by superiors.
Background of the Problem.
The Wal-Mart grievance policy is tantamount to a policy for culling troublesome employees. Grieving employees have made their stories public, explaining that when employees do work up the nerve to complain, the outcome is never a good one for the employee. Figuratively, an employee's first grievance becomes the last of their complaints that will be heard at the retailing giant. Literally, as reported by many employees, grievance results in a path of increased discrimination peppered by a series of demotions, denials of promotional opportunity, and eventual termination.
On behalf of 1.6 million women who worked at Wal-Mart from 1998 to 2001, Betty Dukes filed a class action lawsuit, Betty Dukes vs. Wal-Mart Stores, 2004, that eventually made its way to the highest Court in the United States. Wal-Mart has been fighting the lawsuit for since 1999. The Supreme Court is due to write a decision on the case in June of 2011 (Liptak, 2011). Betty Dukes' story highlights the ills that can befall female employees of the Wal-Mart behemoth. But in a larger sense, Betty Dukes' story exemplifies the corporate climate that enables executives and stockholders to focus inordinately on corporate profits and building the wealth of its stockholders while sacrificing the public good and ignoring the employment laws of the land.
Betty Dukes' Wal-Mart experiences. Betty Dukes is a 52-year-old African-American woman who was hired by Wal-Mart in 1994 as a part-time cashier. She was, by all reports, an admirer of the Wal-Mart enterprise and its founder's "visionary spirit" (Featherstone, 2004). After a year of employment, Dukes was promoted to a full-time position as customer service manager and granted a merit pay raise. In this new position, ostensibly under different supervisors, Dukes began to experience "harsh" discrimination and was denied training opportunities that would enable her to advance further. These training opportunities were granted to her male peers. Once Dukes began to express complaints about the discrimination she was experiencing, discrimination escalated to harassment. She was docked for minor offenses that went unnoticed when performed by male co-workers (Luce, 2005). As Dukes continued to press for equal treatment, she was denied promotion and demoted back to her job as a cashier. An appeal to the Wal-Mart district office brought no relief. Dukes was humiliated by the demotion and lost significant wages due to fewer hours and lower hourly pay. The discrimination that Dukes was experiencing extended to other employees in her workplace; four new management positions were never posted, but were filled by men (Featherstone, 2004). Today, (as of the 2004 publication of Featherstone's book), Betty Dukes works as a greeter for Wal-Mart functions as an associate minister at her Baptist Church, and is the lead plaintiff in the class action suit filed against Wal-Mart for discrimination based on sex (Featherstone,...
The Price-Sensitive Affluents, Wal-Mart has learned (Wal-Mart Annual Reports) is more interested in finding an exceptionally good deal and not necessarily concerned about the shopping experience. This is particularly true as one of the strongest factors influencing the execution of their strategy, the emerging global recession during this timeframe, takes hold. Again as with the Price Value Shopper and the paradoxical purchasing patterns of the Brand Aspirational segment show,
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But when it just recently occurred in 2004 at a store in Jonquiere, British Columbia, the reader must appreciate that a real battle had been won. The original efforts of that particular store for example had the local labor Commission reject certification by a margin of 74 to 65. When the union announced that it won the coveted certification at Quebec, it was quite a blow to the retailer.
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