Walmart women take to YouTube
Alison Clarke
WVoN co-editor
A couple of weeks ago, the women who wanted to sue Walmart as part of a class action lost their claim because the Supreme Court said they failed to prove that the retailer had a nationwide policy that led to gender discrimination.
Sadly for them, that means they can’t now bring a nationwide law suit against the company and will have to bring a series of individual cases in lower courts (see WVoN coverage).
Yet the question remains – how did the Supreme Court (and Justice Scalia in particular) come to the conclusion it did when women fill 70 percent of the hourly jobs at Walmart but only 33 percent of management positions.
The get-out clause for Walmart is its practice of allowing managers at local level to make decisions about pay and promotion.
If the discriminatory policies don’t come from corporate headquarters, the Supreme Court said, workers can’t join together to sue for fair treatment.
But the women of Walmart refuse to be silenced and they’ve put together this very effective You Tube video which starts off with the same animated figures repeating over and over:
“I was passed over for promotion in favour of less experienced and less qualified men.
“I made less money than a man doing the same job.
“Do you see a pattern here? Justice Scalia and his pals on the Supreme Court didn’t.”
Definitely worth a watch, if only to show your support for the Walmart women.
This really is awful in its far-reaching consequences; the ruling basically gives companies carte blanche to systematically discriminate – as long as they allow a local manager to do the discriminating at his discretion. It also, of course, means that these women, to file individual cases, will have to find the means to fund those cases…not easy I suspect when Walmart has been screwing you out of your rightly due for however many years…gaw, it makes me sick what patriarcal capitalism allows itself to do.