Wal-Mart is a huge topic in the news, not for its LOW PRICES! But, for its discrimination against women, which violates the 1964 Civil Rights Act: a legislation that forbids discrimination based on race, creed, or gender. Betty Dukes, a Wal-Mart greeter since 1994, is the lead plaintiff – along with five other women – in a class-action lawsuit against her employer, Wal-Mart. They are claiming to have been passed up for pay raises and promotions in comparison to their male colleagues. “It happened not just in my store but, I believe, across the country,” Dukes said. The lawsuit has also been dubbed Dukes vs. Goliath.
Dukes is a trailblazer for all women who work for Wal-Mart. She came to the company to work hard and to advance like they claim in their commercials. Since 1994 she has been working for minimum wage, passed for promotions, even demoted and given a pay cut for addressing her grievances to managers in 1999. In 2001 she asked a colleague to open a cash register so she can make change for her lunch and again she was demoted for misconduct. That incident sparked the fire for Dukes to sue Wal-Mart in her town of 100,000, just east of San Francisco.
People like Dukes, work for the retail store under low wages and little benefits for the sake of survival in their towns. In the documentary film, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Cost, the chain store is revealed as a mom-n-pops-shop business killer because of its amassed popularity for cheap prices under the guise of a happy smiley face. In the film you also learn that the company advocates that if you’re not making enough money to pursue going on welfare.
Wal-Mart, yes it’s affordable but it is not for the greater good. Whenever you see amazing prices – best believe it’s produced at the sacrifice of somebody else’s livelihood. Wal-Mart encourages women to go on welfare since they don’t pay fair wages. A snob might say, ‘Well, they don’t have to work there.’ But guess what? They do, when they are poor, have kids, and are less educated. Women make up seventy-three percent of the Wal-Mart workforce yet, only a third hold managerial positions.
Dukes has bravely stepped out where no other disenfranchised female Wal-Mart employee has gone, all the way to Supreme Court to fight for equal pay and treatment as her male counterparts. With the legal representation by Brad Seligman, an attorney had who launched The Impact Fund, a legal nonprofit, in 1992, Dukes and five other women are fighting to have their class-action lawsuit to be heard before the Supreme Court, this could cost Wal-Mart billions in back pay.
“I’m somewhat in awe of her, particularly that she has managed to work at Wal-Mart for all these years,” Seligman said. “It is extraordinary difficult to find someone who wants to risk their jobs by filing a lawsuit against their employer.”
In an effort to protect their interests Wal-Mart has a token Hispanic woman, Gisel Ruiz, to defend their interests, “The plaintiffs cannot fairly represent over 1.5 million other women who worked for thousands of different stores with thousands of different managers in multiple states throughout the country,” Ruiz said.
Another plaintiff in the case, Christine Kwapnoski, “My voice against Walmart? Are you kidding me? They would sweep me under the carpet real fast. When we band together, then Walmart has to listen to us.”
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