Wal-Mart is one of the biggest conglomerates in the world. With an annual turnover of over $450 billion in the year 2010, Wal-Mart has since become the biggest retailer in the world. Wal-Mart, which is listed as one of the fortune 500 companies, grew from a small retail outlet established in 1962. The expansion of Wal-Mart to become one of the biggest companies in the world has not been without any hurdles. The organization has faced lawsuits and might continue to do so. The recent lawsuit that Wal-Mart faces has been about an alleged discrimination at the workplace. A local woman who worked at the Cartersville Georgia’s Wal-Mart outlet has moved to court to complain about a perceived gender-based discrimination. This research paper reviews the case and legal implications of such a lawsuit. The paper will summarize actions that led to the lawsuit as well as providing possible steps the management would have taken to avoid the suit. The paper will also review ethical consideration and labor laws in the United States.
Summary of action leading to the lawsuit
The suit against Wal-Mart, as presented by Anita Galentine, claims that females were prevented from management training that would elevate them into a management position at the company. Her argument is that Wal-Mart has not made any effort nor taken the time to ensure that management training is gender sensitive. In suit application, the plaintiff argues that Wal-Mart has deliberately trained male employees without females getting equal chance to take part in the training.
Anita joined Wal-Mart in May of 2001 in Ohio. According to her, she was better placed to land a good job however upon employment, she was handed the cashier position. According to the managers at the Ohio outlet, only the cashier position was open to her. Despite two decades of experience in the hotel industry and other fields, Anita sincerely thought that she deserved better.
That withstanding, Anita would continue to work at the company and later that year transferred to the Cartersville, Georgia outlet. The plaintiff argues that while at Cartersville, she made effort of expressing her interest in the management training known to the management. According to her, she had approached more than six male managers seeking to understand the procedures for getting into the training.
In her effort to join the management training, Anita was transferred to the inventory control division outlet. The plaintiff claims that one of the managers directed that it was only by going through inventory control that one gets the opportunity to go through management training. At the inventory control, she worked harder and in some cases worked extra time without pay. In her argument, she claimed that she was directly targeted for excess work as compared to the rest of her male counterparts. Either, other males never went through inventory control in order to get a chance at the management training.
Finally, the plaintiff argues that the management terminated her employment on the basis of eating food without paying for it. This conduct was practiced by several male employers yet no kind of punishment was advanced to the male employees. She was terminated without any employment evaluation or coaching.
Anita’s case is said to be one the many cases facing Wal-Mart. A court had allowed about 1.6 million women who have worked for Wal-Mart to team up and present single case as joint plaintiffs. However, the Supreme Court would repeal this decision. The Supreme Court has since directed that women who may have faced gender based discrimination should file suits individuals. The case still continues however commentators have likened it to the ‘David vs. Goliath’ scenario .
Role of management in avoiding suit
The management at Wal-Mart, Cartersville store should have done much more avoid the suit facing the company. First, it is rather obvious that procedure of getting into management training unclear. Wal-Mart Cartersville lacks a clear procedure on how employees are selected for the training process. Either, employees are relocated into different departments without a structured means. The management should therefore make effort towards making public procedures of getting into training. The managers should also make public all the steps and departments that an employee has to go through before being considered for training . Finally, the management has the responsibility of ensuring gender balance in any aspects of the company.
Ethical issues
The case as presented by Galentine reflects several issues regarding discrimination at the workplace. There are several cases of discrimination at the workplace and include discrimination based on sex, age, race or religion. While all these kinds of discrimination may be different, the impacts on the organization are the same. Sonja & Phillips, (2004) argues that gender based discrimination is the most rampant kind of discrimination. Here, most victims of gender based discrimination are women and this has been found to be severely impact productivity. Women therefore lack the motivation to work harder as they presume that promotions are rare .
Source of Law
The source of law that this case may derive its determination is the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which allows the court to grant a plaintiff monetary damages where there was intentional discrimination at the workplace . Here, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has been mandated to handle dispute regarding discrimination at the workplace. Additionally, there are other laws, commonly referred to as employment discrimination laws, which employers must keep in mind. They include the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the equal pay act of 1963, the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination act of 2008. These laws are quite clear that it is illegal to discriminate against a person based on their gender, age, nationality, race, religion and physical disability. The areas of discrimination as stipulated in these laws include hiring, promotion, job application procedure, advancements, pay or wages and job training.
With this knowledge, the management at Wal-Mart, Cartersville could do more to reduce such occurrences. For instance, the management could make concerted effort to ensure that both males and Females have equal opportunity with regard to promotion and training. There should be evidence of effort towards affirmative action.
Conclusion
The case under review basically derives its application from the United States discriminations laws. There are myriad of laws that seek to protect the American workers from any form of discrimination at the work place. The case under review is mainly concerned with gender based discrimination. A former female employee at the Cartersville Wal-Mart store is seeking compensation for what she considered deliberate discrimination.
Reference
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