SIVACRACY.NET: Women v. Wal-Mart

Below is an excerpt from: "Women vs. Wal-Mart" (at Salon.com), By Corrie Pikul, in which "Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at Wal-Mart," author Liza Featherstone is interviewed.

Nov. 22, 2004 | In 2000, a 54-year-old Wal-Mart worker named Betty Dukes filed a sex discrimination claim against her employer. Despite six years of hard work and excellent performance reviews, Dukes said, she was denied the training she needed to advance to a higher, salaried position. Dukes was fed up -- and she wasn't the only one. The suit, Dukes vs. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., was eventually expanded to represent 1.6 million women, comprising both current and former employees, making it the largest civil rights class-action suit in history. The suit charged Wal-Mart with discriminating against women in promotions, pay and job assignments, in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (which protects workers from discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion or national origin). This past June, a California judge ruled in favor of the women. Wal-Mart is appealing the decision.

In her new book, "Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at Wal-Mart," journalist Liza Featherstone follows the Dukes case from start to finish. Through interviews with lawyers, plaintiffs and witnesses -- and analyses of reports from both sides -- she paints a picture of Wal-Mart as a hypocritical, falsely pious, exceptionally greedy corporation that creates a massive sinkhole for working women. (Wal-Mart officials refused to be interviewed for the book.) Female employees from stores all over the country tell of being repeatedly passed over for promotions, enduring sexist comments from male co-workers, and worst of all, getting paid significantly lower salaries for doing the same amount of work, or sometimes even more.
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Salon spoke to Featherstone about the details of the Dukes case, red-state and blue-state retailers, and Wal-Mart's paradoxical relationship to the Republican Party.
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The way that Wal-Mart underpays women and doesn't promote them, despite the fact that so many women who work there are supporting their families, is shockingly hostile. As one of the plaintiffs pointed out, "They don't even pay you enough to pay a babysitter." In their company culture, they've always had the idea that to move into management, people have to be willing to relocate. [Uprooting the family] can be tremendously disruptive to families for either men or women. It's clearly something that can be avoided, especially now that there are so many Wal-Marts everywhere. You hardly need to be sent to another state to work at a different Wal-Mart.
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Now, when Wal-Mart says, "We're bringing low-cost goods to the community," it's hard to argue with that. Wal-Mart really will offer lower-cost goods than many small retailers. It's hard to counter that by saying the public costs don't always show up on the receipt, that there are hidden costs to Wal-Mart that you aren't always aware of.

Are those hidden costs what you were referring to when you called Wal-Mart "one of the biggest welfare queens of our time"?

Yes. American taxpayers chip in to pay for many full-time Wal-Mart employees because they usually require incremental health insurance, public housing, food stamps -- there are so many ways in which Wal-Mart employees are not able to be self-sufficient. This is very ironic, because Sam Walton is embraced as the American symbol of self-sufficiency. It is really troubling and dishonest that Wal-Mart supports Republican candidates in the way that they do: 80 percent of their corporate campaign contributions go to Republicans. But Republicans tend not to support the types of public assistance programs that Wal-Mart depends on. If anything, Wal-Mart should be crusading for national health insurance. They should at least be acknowledging that because they are unable to provide these things for their employees, we should have a more general welfare state.
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Wal-Mart has been called a red-state retailer, while other stores like Target and Costco are seen as more blue state because they have more progressive policies.

I found Wal-Mart to be a really interesting analog to the Republican Party, in the way that party convinces ordinary people, especially in rural areas, that it shares their interests and embodies their culture. The Wal-Mart CEO has even said, "City people don't understand Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is for country people." That's so similar to the way that Republicans convince rural people that "we get you, we understand you, we support you." And it's really amazing and instructive how powerful that language is.
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