Liza Featherstone, who literally wrote the book on the Dukes v. Walmart case, profiles one of the defendants in the Daily Beast. However, for those of you who haven’t been reading this blog forever, this reminder of the case as a whole is more useful:

While stories like Dee Gunter’s are outrageous, the data on the company’s employment practices are even more disturbing, revealing how pervasive the discrimination has been. When the suit was first filed, two-thirds of Wal-Mart’s work force was female, while two-thirds of its managers were men. Women were paid less than men in just about every job title, for doing exactly the same work. Women were also placed in lower-paying jobs, consistently. All this was true even though women stayed at Wal-Mart longer than men, and earned higher performance ratings.

Wal-Mart executives were well aware of the inequities for years. Sam Walton, the company’s legendary founder wrote in his 1992 autobiography about the barriers women faced at Wal-Mart. And an internal report in 1996 found “a pervasive hostility to women in management” and widespread agreement that “stereotypes limit opportunities offered to women” at the company. A year before the lawsuit was filed, Coleman Peterson, the company’s then head of human resources (or, in Wal-Mart’s whimsical argot, “People Division”) and resident Cassandra, warned his colleagues that Wal-Mart lagged far behind its competitors promoting women into management—another version of an alarm he’d been sounding for years. The old-boys network at the company’s headquarters did nothing.

The way I read the Wal-flack propaganda, the company thinks it’s all in the past (which is pretty funny as they’re the ones who are stretching the case out for years and years through appeals). Unfortunately for Walmart, systematic discrimination doesn’t have a statute of limitations.

As Featherstone explains,

After nearly a decade, the plaintiffs and their lawyers now seem hopeful that the women of Wal-Mart will get their day in court.

Walmart can appeal the class certification to the Supreme Court, but if that fails this thing may actually go to trial.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 at 1202 by Jonathan Rees and is filed under Litigation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.