Six years before former female employees filed a class-action employment discrimination lawsuit against its employer Wal-Mart, the company had hired a prominent law firm to examine the vulnerability to such a lawsuit.
Completed in 1995, the report confirms widespread gender disparities in pay and promotion at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores. The report complied by the employment discrimination lawyers of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld urged the company to take basic steps, such as posting every job opening and creating specific goals, for the purpose of promoting women and minorities to avoid liability.
Other recommendations included documentation of applicants’ job preferences, post notices of all openings and training opportunities, establish promotion goals and timetables for women and minorities. Wal-Mart was also suggestion to set up an arbitration system for employment claims to reduce the risks of court cases.
Depositions in the lawsuit suggested that Wal-Mart’s initial adoption of these recommendations were incomplete. Coleman H. Peterson, the executive vice president for human resources expressed this lack of progress toward Wal-Mart’s diversity goals.
In a memorandum, he wrote:
Female management representation at Wal-Mart super centers, Sam’s and logistics and, therefore, total company are worse than prior year
The plaintiff’s lawyer says the report and memorandum would seem to confirm that upper management were fully aware that women were not getting promoted in proper numbers.
Wal-Mart now faces the possibility of trial for a employment class-action lawsuit which represents over a million women and could cost upwards to a billion dollars. The final hurdle lies in their appeal to the Supreme Court to rule whether or not the Ninth District Court’s decision to not throw out the case based on the technical details was valid. They also cite that their decision was the complete opposite of to what was precedent in the past.
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