Do a Brief of a news article - Case Study Example

Case Brief It was in the year 2001 that, Betty Dukes, working as a cashier at Wal-Mart in Pittsburg, California, sued the company. She claimed that she had been denied opportunities to advance even though she had been consistently receiving good performance reviews. Brad Seligman, the attorney who was representing her, claimed that this was a common pattern of sexual discrimination which reflected the corporate culture of the retailing giant – Wal-Mart.The Washington Post reports that this case filed by Dukes has now been circulating in courts for about 10 years.

The allegations that have been brought to court comprise of detailed testimonies from managers at Wal-Mart, who claimed to have visited strip clubs to conduct company meetings and did not see any downside to visiting Hooters for the purpose of a business gathering. One female employee reported an incident where her male supervisors had told her to “doll up” and apply more makeup and dress appropriately. Dukes hence became the face of a case that was gathering momentum in court and making waves, mostly because of the fact that the case involved sworn statements from over a 100 female employees who claimed that they had faced discrimination, harassment or had to perform in a hostile work environment simply because of their sex and a failure of Wal-Mart management to address these problems.

They went as far as to state that they were not given equal opportunities as their male peers and so hired a statistician to evaluate Wal-Mart’s payroll data to analyze the ratio of men who were progressing compared to female employees.So the allegations made were that women represented two-thirds of hourly employees, however it was seen that approximately less than 14 percent of them became store managers. On average, a woman employee waited 4.3 years to be promoted to the post of an assistant manager whereas for men the process took 2.86 years. Similarly men were promoted to the title of store manger in 8.

64 years compared to the 10.12 years women employees had to wait. Lastly the allegations stated that women earned about 5 to 15 percent lesser than men, across all job categories. The ruling of the US Supreme Court, according to ‘The Guardian’, rejected these arguments which stated that there was a common policy of unfairness against women at Wal-Mart. Senior US judges came to the decision that this 10 year long gender bias case was in complete failure to meet the requirements for class action cases.

Also a maximum number of conservative judges ruled that the female employees against Wal-Mart did not have sufficient proof to prove their claims. The rationale for this court decision was primarily due to insufficient evidence and the presence of Wal-Mart’s thorough anti-discrimination policy. At one point a lower US court ruled that the case might have made it to a trial however the Supreme Court ruled against it; primarily due to the fact that if this class action had been initiated it would have set the ball rolling for gender discrimination cases for a number of corporations, and companies such as Microsoft and General Electric voiced their concerns to court.

Furthermore there were several problems found with the law suit. The judges found that it did not meet the technical requirements for any type of class action to be initiated as far as monetary claims were concerned. Also the women did not have sufficient details in common to be able to be representative of a class of people. ReferencesRushe, D. Victory for Walmart as huge sex bias case is thrown out. The guardian. 20th June 2011. Accessed on 6th December 2011 and retrieved from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jun/20/walmart-sex-discrimination-class-action-rejectedWashington Post Editors.

Rundown: Wal-Mart sex discrimination suit goes to Supreme Court. The Washington Post. 20th June 2011. Accessed on 6th December and retrieved from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jun/20/walmart-sex-discrimination-class-action-rejected