meganmonkey

Wal-Mart wins class-action case in Supreme Court

In a ruling that raises new barriers to class-action lawsuits against large companies, the U.S. Supreme Court derailed a sex discrimination suit Monday on behalf of more than 1 million female Wal-Mart employees, saying they failed to pinpoint any company policy that denied them equal pay or promotions.

The justices unanimously overruled federal courts in San Francisco that had allowed all women who worked for Wal-Mart since December 1998 to join in a single, nationwide suit seeking back pay. But the court was split on the most critical issues in the case, with a five-member majority led by Justice Antonin Scalia setting tough new standards for future suits:

-- A company that allows local managers to decide pay and promotions can't be held responsible for sex-based disparities in the corporation unless those differences can be tied to some companywide practice that amounts to "a general policy of discrimination."

-- A company whose policies denied women equal pay would be entitled to individual hearings on the amount due to each worker. In contrast, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals proposed allowing hearings for a sample group of employees to determine back pay for the entire class, an approach that would save time and money but, Scalia said, would be unfair to the company.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...#ixzz1Q0iOEeIu

The nation’s highest court has decided that, because these women have no written proof that discrimination was a top-down systemic policy (despite their actual experiences while working for Wal-Mart), and because their claims were varied in some ways, they have no case against the largest private employer in the world. What good are laws against discrimination if they are not enforced and the workers have no recourse if their rights are violated?

There is a nasty catch-22 at work here. Wal-Mart is too large and powerful to be successfully challenged by individual people, or small groups. It is not hyperbole to suggest that low-wage women do not have the time, money, or resources to fight a corporation like Wal-Mart individually.

On the other hand, the number of woman discriminated against is also too large, according to the Supreme Court, to have identical claims against the corporation. Their experiences of discrimination were not all exactly the same. Therefore the case cannot be made that Wal-Mart is systematically discriminating and should pay the women whose rights were violated. Wal-Mart is the world's largest private employer. How could the class be smaller than it is?

Wal-Mart is very careful to leave decisions about promotions and raises to local managers. Of course there is no official, written company policy that favors men over women, although the evidence is clear. According to the courts, by not spelling out any such blatantly discriminatory policy, Wal-Mart is off the hook. This seems backward in a country with laws supposedly designed to protect workers’ rights. Shouldn’t the responsibility lie on the company itself to create policies that explicitly prohibit discrimination and to enforce those policies? Why should the impetus be on the low-wage workers rather than the immensely profitable corporation?

If class action suits are not an option due to the scope and variety of the details of each claim, then capitalism has yet another loophole through which to exploit workers.

It is arguable that this ruling is technically fair within the legal system. Whether or not this is the case, the system we currently have is proven once again to support the interests of the ruling class while the rest of us have to take our crumbs and be quiet. Laws on the books about labor rights, environmental protection, food safety, trade agreements and the like are useless when unenforced. Yet it is clear that there will be very little enforcement, and when there is, it is the exception to the rule. The US government currently does not, cannot and will not work in the interests of the people. It will continue to protect the rights of corporations to exploit and profit from the labor and resources that rightly belong to the people. There is no recourse in our elections, legislative process or court system.

Class Action. That is what this lawsuit was about, the working class. Make no mistake about it - the capitalists’ worst nightmare is seeing the workers come together as a class. Let’s rethink what we mean by Class Action as it becomes increasingly clear that the courts won’t recognize the largest class in America. We need to confront the ruling class with the only power we have - our labor. This court ruling is a clear attack on the working class, another lost battle in the one-sided class war which is raging against us. The capitalist economic system can only exist as long as the owners and shareholders can profit off of our labor. We are the only ones with the power to challenge their ability to do so.