Most shoppers heading to Wal-Mart for back-to-school supplies have seen the retail giant’s television ads touting advancement opportunities for women and people of color who work at Wal-Mart. The ads are running as Wal-Mart awaits a ruling that could transform a sexual discrimination lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco into a class-action lawsuit representing as many as 1 million current and former female Wal-Mart employees.
The women bringing the lawsuit claim Wal-Mart discriminates against its female employees in promotions, compensation and job assignments. Women are assigned predominately to the lowest-paying positions and systematically denied advancement opportunities, according to their suit.
These women are the latest employees to assert Wal-Mart engages in mistreatment of employees—including its current assaults on workers’ federal rights to join a union, receive overtime pay and engage in free speech, says Al Zack, assistant director of strategic programs for United Food and Commercial Workers.
This month in St. Louis, Mo., after United Food and Commercial Workers Local 665 sponsored radio ads stating only about one-third of Wal-Mart workers have company-sponsored health coverage, Wal-Mart lawyers wrote the stations demanding they stop running. The lawyers contended 46 percent of workers have Wal-Mart-sponsored health coverage.
But Wal-Mart lawyers likely left out key details underlying the 46 percent figure, which Wal-Mart reported to the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Department of Labor in 2001, charges Zack. He notes the 46 percent may include specific policy coverage options, such as dental-only, in addition to full-coverage policies. Wal-Mart also may be including its $1,000 maximum benefit polices for workers not eligible for regular coverage. Yet even that total may be lower than 46 percent, Zack adds, because since 2001, Wal-Mart increased the time needed to qualify for family coverage—from three to six months for full-time workers.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch quickly condemned Wal-Mart’s attack on the union’s free speech rights. An Aug. 15 editorial, “Wal-Mart Muzzling Critics,” said “the union is advocating a position on a matter of public concern....Free speech should be protected, even if there are conflicting versions of the truth being aired.” On Aug. 18, a Post-Dispatch editorial cartoon showed a threatening-looking Wal-Mart corporate representative sporting a “How May I Muzzle You?” banner.
Wal-Mart: Firing Workers for Seeking a Union?
While studies have shown 25 percent of employers fire at least one worker for union activity during organizing campaigns—an action illegal under federal labor laws—it is difficult and time-consuming for workers to prove they have been illegally fired.
Larry Allen suspects he has such a case. In August, the Las Vegas-area Wal-Mart produce worker and UFCW Local 711 advocate spent two vacation days attending UFCW’s convention in San Francisco where he told reporters he was paying off a $30,000 medical bill because he couldn’t afford Wal-Mart’s full health coverage. When he returned to his job, he was fired.
Undaunted, Allen attended the Aug. 5 AFL-CIO Working Families Presidential Forum in Chicago, where Democratic candidate Howard Dean criticized Wal-Mart’s poor health coverage and told reporters about Allen’s termination.
Also in August, Wal-Mart fired night stock worker Kelvin Blackman, a 25-year retired U.S. Department of Defense employee and key UFCW Local 400 supporter. The firing came as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) appeared headed toward rejecting Wal-Mart’s challenge to the 40 night stockers’ petition for an NLRB union election. But after Blackman’s incensed Clinton, Md., co-workers appeared at an NLRB hearing on the election petition, Wal-Mart reinstated Blackman on Aug. 20.
These are only two instances in which union supporters have been fired, according to UFCW Executive Vice President Michael E. Leonard. They are part of a “pattern of contempt for this nation’s labor laws that shows how low Wal-Mart will stoop to keep its workers from exercising their right to have a union,” he says.
Taking Away Overtime Pay?
In a lawsuit in Texas, Wal-Mart is charged with failing to pay overtime to loss prevention workers. On July 30, U.S. District Judge T. John Ward ordered Wal-Mart to disclose detailed time records for all loss prevention workers at 28 Wal-Mart stores in 15 Arkansas and eastern Texas cities. These records will be used to determine whether the lawsuit should be certified as a class action.
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