Wal-Mart vs. The Women

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/onair/transcripts/walmart_sex_discrimination_suit_110328/

Monday, March 28, 2011

SUZANNE PRATT: A potential billion-dollar battle takes center stage at the Supreme Court tomorrow. It's a massive sex discrimination lawsuit against retail giant Wal-Mart. The suit claims millions of former and current female employees were discriminated against because of their gender. As Darren Gersh reports, the issue before the justices is who should represent the interests of all those women.

DARREN GERSH, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: For years, Chris Kwapnoski trained men who were soon promoted over her at Wal-Mart. Eventually, she asked a manager what she had to do to get ahead.

CHRIS KWAPNOSKI, WAL-MART EMPLOYEE: And he told me I need to blow the cobwebs off my makeup and doll up.

GERSH: At the time, Kwapnoski was working in the back of the store taking in merchandise.

KWAPNOSKI: If I'm going to doll up, I'm going to wear nice clothes, high heels, whatever. I could just see myself scooting across the concrete floor and breaking an ankle or driving a forklift in a skirt and heels. And I'm not sure what makeup would have to do with my daily performance as far as my job goes.

GERSH: The key issue before the Supreme Court is whether more than one million current and former Wal-Mart women can sue the retailing giant as a group. Lisa Blatt represents other big- box retailers who have filed a brief with the Supreme Court supporting Wal-Mart. Blatt says if the Supreme Court allows a handful of employees to represent over a million, it will let plaintiffs' lawyers force settlements out of employers.

FULL story at link.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Walmart's making the classic argument against class actions.

The whole point is to identify a class of litigants with the same or similar personal or economic injuries via one class action. Walmart is arguing that hundreds of thousands of women have to engage hundreds of thousands of attorneys to file hundreds of thousands of suits for the same effect, expecting that its legal team can get the courts to dismiss or the plaintiffs to settle for very little -- and continues its policy of gender discrimination.