US discrimination case between Betty Dukes and Wal-Mart reaches Supreme Court

[kpete]

Source: TIMES UK

A 60-year-old “greeter” from Wal-Mart is at the centre of the largest sex-discrimination lawsuit in American history — a battle that has become known as “Betty versus Goliath” and is about to reach the country’s highest court.

Betty Dukes alleges that Wal-Mart, which owns Asda in Britain, systematically pays women less than men, and promotes men to higher positions at a faster rate.

The class action will list a series of breaches of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which made it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of race or gender. If Wal-Mart is found to have broken the law, compensation payouts could be worth billions of dollars.

Theodore J. Boutrous Jr, the company’s lead lawyer, told The Times yesterday that the next stage of the nine-year dispute will be played out before the Supreme Court — the company’s last chance to argue that Mrs Dukes’s grievances should not be expanded into a broader case on behalf of an estimated one million current and former women employees. Mrs Dukes, a Baptist minister, said: “In this life, you have to stand up or be trampled.” After the 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals ruled in favour of the case progressing last week, she said that she was not deterred by the biblical scale of her battle. “David had five stones, but only needed one,” she said.



Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7116313.ece

[Sherman A1]

1. YES!

+1

[rurallib]

2. a not so gutsy prediction: 4 for Dukes, 4 for Wallworld and Kennedy

who will follow his own precedence in Ledbetter and vote for Wallyworld.

[havocmom]

3. Seems likely. And look for large retailers to expand interviews to include tests

More psych profiling tests for prospective employees seem likely. Gotta make sure they are hiring sheep who don't mind being abused so they can go about their merry way of treating employees like property rather than human beings.