From The New York Times, 6/20/01

6 Women Sue Wal-Mart, Charging Bias

By Reed Abelson
STAFF WRITER THE NEW YORK TIMES

SAN FRANCISCO 6/20/01—Six female employees of Wal-Mart Stores filed a federal lawsuit yesterday, accusing the company of engaging in widespread discrimination against women.

Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, has created two work forces with women “predominantly assigned to the lowest-paying positions with the least chance of advancement,” the lawsuit says.

The suit, filed in United States District Court in San Francisco, seeks class-action status for an estimated 700,000 current and former female employees. If granted, it could eclipse cases against Texaco and State Farm Insurance as the largest discrimination lawsuit ever brought against a private employer in the United States.

The suit is a result of more than a year of effort by three private law firms and three nonprofit legal groups that have worked together to interview dozens of women around the country.

Though 72 percent of Wal-Mart’s hourly sales employees are women, according to the plaintiffs, who relied on data from government regulators, women represent only one-third of the company’s managers. The suit contends that 56 percent of managers at Wal-Mart’s largest competitors are women.

An industry leader, Wal-Mart “is also the leader in unfair treatment against women in the United States,” said Brad Seligman, executive director of the Impact Fund of Berkeley, Calif., which focuses on civil rights litigation.

Many of the company’s competitors, he said, are “far beyond Wal-Mart,” adding, “It’s as if the last 25 years of progress for women never happened.”

Wal-Mart, which is based in Bentonville, Ark., and has some 3,100 discount stores and shopping clubs in the United States, denied that it practiced any systemic discrimination.

“We don’t have policies and practices in place that promote discrimination of any kind,” a spokesman, Bill Wertz, said.

The company says that women hold 37 percent of its 55,000 management positions, including executive vice presidents and regional vice presidents.

It also said that comparing its record with those of other retailers might be difficult because companies may define who is a manager differently. Wal-Mart, for example, does not include its store department managers in its count of managers, according to Mr. Wertz. If department managers are included, women hold roughly half of management jobs, he said.

“We will have a vigorous defense of this case in court,” Mr. Wertz added.

As it has come to dominate retailing in the United States through its discount stores and shopping clubs, Wal-Mart has had repeated conflicts with its more than a million employees. The company is strongly anti-union, causing competitors and labor groups to criticize it as paying low wages and refusing to offer a broad array of benefits.

Earlier this month, Wal-Mart was held in contempt of court and fined more than $750,000 for violating an agreement with the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The company had reached a settlement with the commission over its treatment of two disabled employees.

Wal-Mart is seeking another hearing before the judge, according to Mr. Wertz. “We had a good-faith effort to comply with the consent decree,” he said.

The chain has also been subject to numerous lawsuits charging sexual harassment and other forms of sex discrimination, plaintiffs’ lawyers say, though this suit is the first in which class-action status is being sought.

Individual cases “are really treated as a cost of doing business for this large company,” said Joseph M. Sellers, a lawyer at Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll in Washington, which was also involved in the Texaco case and is among the law firms bringing the case against Wal-Mart. He said the lawyers at the private firms and nonprofit groups had agreed to work together because of Wal-Mart’s size.

“We are very cognizant that this is a goliath we are taking on,” he said.

The case also mirrors some accusations against Home Depot in the mid-’90s. That case was settled for $65 million plus $22.5 million in lawyers’ fees. Home Depot did not admit any wrongdoing.

The women bringing yesterday’s suit against Wal-Mart said they were routinely denied the chance to move up in the company because they had not been made aware of openings or given the support necessary to advance.

“The promotions I should have had, the jobs I should have had, were given to men,” one plaintiff, Stephanie Odle, said. She said she worked for Sam’s Club stores for eight years, transferring 11 times to different stores. In 1999, she said, she was fired by Wal-Mart and replaced by a man.

Betty Dukes, who works for Wal-Mart in Pittsburg, Calif., outside San Francisco, and who has been an employee for seven years, said that she, too, had been rebuffed in attempts to be promoted. Jobs became available that were never posted, she said, and were then filled by men. She also said that women are routinely assigned to certain areas of the store, like selling baby clothes as opposed to goods like hardware. “I can mix a can of paint,” she said. “I want a chance to do it.”

Micki Earwood said she was told that she would have to move to New York from Ohio to become an assistant manager. As a single mother with a small daughter, Ms. Earwood said, the move was impossible. And as a Wal-Mart personnel manager, she said it became apparent to her “that the male employees were given many more opportunities for promotion and better pay than the female employees.” She said she was fired last September because she complained.

Wal-Mart says it continues to try to add women at higher-level management positions. The company also posts job openings on an internal Web site, according to Mr. Wertz, who said, “Those postings are open to anyone.”

The company maintains that it does not “steer women” into certain areas, but Mr. Wertz acknowledged that women might be more prevalent in some departments than others, given differences in the interests of women and men. “Societal issues should not be confused with Wal-Mart practices,” he said.

Wal-Mart also says that it has developed programs to make it easier for women to advance. One program, which has been in place for several years, allows employees to gain experience to help them become store managers without having to move, according to Mr. Wertz. He could not say how many women had taken advantage of the program.

The lawsuit was filed in California because two of the plaintiffs are in the state and Wal-Mart has numerous California stores.