by ELIZABETH WHITMAN
NEW YORK, Jun 21, 2011 (IPS) – Labour and women’s rights groups are strongly criticising the Supreme Court’s rejection of a class action suit brought by current and former female employees of Walmart who sought to represent 1.5 million female employees who claim that the company discriminated against women.
The largest retailer in the world, Walmart raked in over 405 billion dollars in sales last year and employs 2.1 million associates around the world.
Employees who want to sue Walmart for sexual discrimination will now have to proceed individually, or in smaller class action suits.
In ‘Dukes vs. Walmart Stores Inc.’, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the plaintiffs lacked the common ground by which to proceed as a class in further legal action – overturning previous decisions made by lower courts.
In 2004, the San Francisco District Court authorised six individual plaintiffs to represent 1.5 million female employees of Walmart in a national sexual discrimination lawsuit. After Walmart appealed, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the federal district court’s decision.
Nevertheless, in August 2010, Walmart filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court requesting it to review the Ninth Circuit’s upholding of the federal court’s ruling.
The Supreme Court decision did not determine that Walmart does or did not discriminate against women, although Justice Antonin Scalia did write as part of the justification for the Court’s decision that the evidence presented lacked “significant proof” that Walmart “operated under a general policy of discrimination”.
According to the official website for the class action suit (www.walmartclass.com), when the women originally filed the motion for class action, they supported it with 110 detailed sworn statements from women who worked in 184 Walmart stores in 30 states, along with over 1,200,000 pages from Walmart’s corporate files and other testimonies from Walmart executives.
They sought to sue Walmart for sexual discrimination that displayed itself in unequal pay and promotion opportunities, job assignments, and other aspects of the Walmart workplace.
Girshriela Green has been an employee at a Walmart store in Los Angeles for nearly three years. She told IPS that hearing the Supreme Court’s decision was “saddening”. She is not part of the lawsuit, but said she certainly would be part of a future lawsuit.
“I don’t understand why we don’t get the same respect as the male associates” when male and female employees do “equal work,” she stated. Green has experienced firsthand the pay discrimination that plaintiffs in the case referenced.
IPS for more