Walmart And Sex Discrimination By The Numbers Summary
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Wal-Mart And Sex Discrimination By The Numbers
Dan Ackman, 06.23.04, 9:40 AM ET
NEW YORK - A federal judge in San Francisco yesterday granted class-action status to a sex-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores, the nation's largest employer. The case, which now covers as many as 1.6 million current and former female Wal-Mart employees, can be decided en masse because it is based on a statistical analysis that shows Wal-Mart paid female workers less and gave them fewer promotions than men.
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U.S. District Judge Martin Jenkins found that attorneys for the six named class representatives, …show more content…
in a case that started three years ago, "present largely uncontested, descriptive statistics which show that women working in Wal-Mart stores are paid less than men in every region, that pay disparities exist in most job categories, that the salary gap widens over time even for men and women hired into the same jobs at the same time, that women take longer to enter into management positions, and that the higher one looks in the organization, the lower the percentage of women." Women make up more than 70% of Wal-Mart's (nyse: WMT - news - people ) hourly workforce but less than one-third of its store management, according to the plaintiffs.
Like every class-action ruling, the certification "should not be construed in any manner as a ruling on the merits or the probable outcome of the case," Jenkins wrote.
It simply means that all the women have enough in common to be treated as a whole. Wal-Mart had said a class-action of this size and scope would be unmanageable. But the judge--in a ruling Judge Jenkins himself declared was historic--said enough common issues predominate to decide many issues, if not all, in a single …show more content…
forum.
"Certification of this class shows that no employer, not even the world's largest employer, is above the law.
This decision sets the stage for women at Wal-Mart to get their fair share of pay and promotions which have been denied them for years," said Joseph Sellers, a lawyer at Washington, D.C. 's Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, which represents the women in the case, in a statement.
Wal-Mart said it would appeal the ruling immediately and that it disputes the premise of the case. "Let's keep in mind that today's ruling has absolutely nothing to do with the merits of the case. Judge Jenkins is simply saying he thinks it meets the legal requirements necessary to move forward as a class action. We strongly disagree with his decision and will seek an appeal," the company said in a statement. In the past it has said that its own analysis of its employment statistics shows no discrimination.
But now a jury may get to decide the impact of those numbers, coupled with testimony of any number of plaintiffs telling their own story.
Wal-Mart reported sales of $256 billion for 2003. It owns and operates more than 3,500 stores in the United States, with that number increasing by more than one store per day. It employs more than 1.2 million employees in the United States, two-thirds women, according to the
plaintiffs.
For the case to get this far is already a victory for the plaintiffs. Indeed, most sex discrimination allegations don't make it to a courthouse at all; according to data compiled by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, there were 27,146 sex discrimination claims resolved administratively by its office last year, and the level of enforcement has been stable for a decade. More than 15,000 EEOC claims, or 57%, were found to have "no reasonable cause," and were likely dropped. Just 28.77, or 10.6%, resulted in settlements, which totaled $94.2 million. The average settlement was just $34,200. The EEOC filed just 393 lawsuits on sex discrimination grounds.
To be sure, there are cases outside the EEOC system, but not many. There were 20,507 employment-based civil rights actions--of all kinds, not just sex discrimination--filed in all federal courts last year, according to the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts. There are no statistics for how the federal cases were resolved. But the numbers hardly seem alarming for an economy with 146 million workers.
In 2000, the U.S. government agreed to settle for $508 million a sex discrimination case filed 20 years earlier on behalf of more than 1,000 women who alleged they were refused employment by the now defunct U.S. Information Agency. The Wal-Mart case may be headed in that direction, though there are miles to go before that happens. For now, and generally, the multi-million verdicts that make the papers are rare indeed.
http://www.forbes.com/careers/2004/06/23/cx_da_0623topnews.html
Wal-Mart And Sex Discrimination By The Numbers
Dan Ackman, 06.23.04, 9:40 AM ET
NEW YORK - A federal judge in San Francisco yesterday granted class-action status to a sex-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores, the nation's largest employer. The case, which now covers as many as 1.6 million current and former female Wal-Mart employees, can be decided en masse because it is based on a statistical analysis that shows Wal-Mart paid female workers less and gave them fewer promotions than men.
[pic]
|[pic]More From Dan Ackman | |
| | |
| |
U.S. District Judge Martin Jenkins found that attorneys for the six named class representatives, …show more content…
in a case that started three years ago, "present largely uncontested, descriptive statistics which show that women working in Wal-Mart stores are paid less than men in every region, that pay disparities exist in most job categories, that the salary gap widens over time even for men and women hired into the same jobs at the same time, that women take longer to enter into management positions, and that the higher one looks in the organization, the lower the percentage of women." Women make up more than 70% of Wal-Mart's (nyse: WMT - news - people ) hourly workforce but less than one-third of its store management, according to the plaintiffs.
Like every class-action ruling, the certification "should not be construed in any manner as a ruling on the merits or the probable outcome of the case," Jenkins wrote.
It simply means that all the women have enough in common to be treated as a whole. Wal-Mart had said a class-action of this size and scope would be unmanageable. But the judge--in a ruling Judge Jenkins himself declared was historic--said enough common issues predominate to decide many issues, if not all, in a single …show more content…
forum.
"Certification of this class shows that no employer, not even the world's largest employer, is above the law.
This decision sets the stage for women at Wal-Mart to get their fair share of pay and promotions which have been denied them for years," said Joseph Sellers, a lawyer at Washington, D.C. 's Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, which represents the women in the case, in a statement.
Wal-Mart said it would appeal the ruling immediately and that it disputes the premise of the case. "Let's keep in mind that today's ruling has absolutely nothing to do with the merits of the case. Judge Jenkins is simply saying he thinks it meets the legal requirements necessary to move forward as a class action. We strongly disagree with his decision and will seek an appeal," the company said in a statement. In the past it has said that its own analysis of its employment statistics shows no discrimination.
But now a jury may get to decide the impact of those numbers, coupled with testimony of any number of plaintiffs telling their own story.
Wal-Mart reported sales of $256 billion for 2003. It owns and operates more than 3,500 stores in the United States, with that number increasing by more than one store per day. It employs more than 1.2 million employees in the United States, two-thirds women, according to the
plaintiffs.
For the case to get this far is already a victory for the plaintiffs. Indeed, most sex discrimination allegations don't make it to a courthouse at all; according to data compiled by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, there were 27,146 sex discrimination claims resolved administratively by its office last year, and the level of enforcement has been stable for a decade. More than 15,000 EEOC claims, or 57%, were found to have "no reasonable cause," and were likely dropped. Just 28.77, or 10.6%, resulted in settlements, which totaled $94.2 million. The average settlement was just $34,200. The EEOC filed just 393 lawsuits on sex discrimination grounds.
To be sure, there are cases outside the EEOC system, but not many. There were 20,507 employment-based civil rights actions--of all kinds, not just sex discrimination--filed in all federal courts last year, according to the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts. There are no statistics for how the federal cases were resolved. But the numbers hardly seem alarming for an economy with 146 million workers.
In 2000, the U.S. government agreed to settle for $508 million a sex discrimination case filed 20 years earlier on behalf of more than 1,000 women who alleged they were refused employment by the now defunct U.S. Information Agency. The Wal-Mart case may be headed in that direction, though there are miles to go before that happens. For now, and generally, the multi-million verdicts that make the papers are rare indeed.
http://www.forbes.com/careers/2004/06/23/cx_da_0623topnews.html