Evaluating a Discrimination Issue at Wal-Mart

Evaluating a Discrimination Issue at Wal-Mart

Jacinthia Gladfelter

Business Ethics and Social Responsibility OMM 640

Brandy Goldston

February 18, 2013

Wal-Mart

Read Case 7.3: Sex Discrimination at Wal-Mart. Answer the questions below and submit the completed assignment to your instructor.

* What financial impact could the lawsuit potentially have on Wal-Mart?

Based on numerous studies, average costs in defending a class action lawsuit range from five million dollars to one hundred million dollars, contingent on the size of the employer and the potential class, lawyers involved, location of the lawsuit, and more importantly, the length of the litigation. It could have caused a major financial impact on Wal-Mart since it is not just a simple and ordinarily small retail industry. Boatright (2009) stated, "Since women employees at Wal-Mart comprised more than 65 percent of hourly workers in a work force of over one million people, the potential members of a class-action suit on behalf of all alleged victims of sex discrimination totaled at least 700,000 and possibly as high as 1.6 million women who had worked at the company for any length of time between 1996 and 2001... If the suit is granted class-action status by the courts, Dukes, et al. v. Wal-Mart will be the largest class-action litigation ever brought against an American company." (p. 199).

The theory of class action proceedings could clarify discrimination in the workplace; the plaintiffs should be able to prove their case so the court or jury could decide how all the class members were treated based on these evidence. In view of the fact that everyone is affected by the same policy and the experiences of the named plaintiffs are standard occurrences of all the women they mean to represent. It would have caused potentially billions of dollars, not to mention the victory dance women would have been making along with a strong message for employers concerning fair treatment for women. People watched this case closely; large companies believed that allowing a huge class action would have a negative effect on businesses.

* What are the major moral complaints of the females suing Wal-Mart? Are these moral complaints justified? Why?

Wal-Mart employs over one and a half million workers at four thousand locations nationwide. Considering the size and the scope of the group is significantly a major issue in this case. The main plaintiff, "Betty Dukes is an African American woman from Tallulah, Louisiana, and the first-named plaintiff in the 'largest Title VII class action in history' -- filed against Wal-Mart' So we understand the significance of this entitlement, let me convey a brief description, 'In Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress made discrimination on the basis of "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin" a violation of federal law" (Fairness In Numbers: A Comment On AT&T V. Concepcion, Wal-Mart V. Dukes, And Turner V. Rogers, 2011). Dukes and five other women alleged the whole company to have involved in a pattern and practice of discrimination against women in promotions, employee pay, management training, and job assignments. The fundamental issue is that women remained, on average, lower paid and less well represented at the top levels of organizations in comparison to their presence in the lower levels and their equal, if not better educated than their male co-employees.

Moreover, the complaints seem incoherent because we understand that promotions, decision-making and earnings are all based on experience, skills, abilities, characteristics and knowledge of the individual. It seems unrealistic to say that a company should not depend on the proficiencies and decision-making abilities of the management staff. Being a large corporation, with multiple (thousands) locations nationwide, it is quite impossible to prove that Wal-Mart maintains a unified culture of sex discrimination. According to Brown (2011),

Does every person have to be judged individually? Absolutely. Do women need to be provided the support they need to stay on this path if they choose to? Absolutely. And will the statistics look even-handed when these legitimate factors are taken into account? Yes. So, if comparisons are made between similarly situated men and women, we will get a much better sense of where there is a problem to remedy and where there isn't (par-5-6).

The plaintiffs alleged that the differences are produced by a shared practice, which according to Brown (2011) "is supposedly a central policy of decentralized decision-making in other words, that the company has decided to leave the substance of pay and promotion decisions to individual managers" (par. 3). In addition, these women believed that the company had an unofficial male-dominated culture, giving managers excuses when biased decisions were made. In the past discussions, I have shared my personal experiences at work, which are closely similar. The fact I am not an expert puts me in uneasy position to judge; however whether or not the allegations were true or not, it only