Walmart and the sex discrimination case

Recently the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 the class action suit claiming Walmart was discriminatory against women. Walmart has a company-wide policy that local managers set salaries and give promotions.

The ruling brief from Justice Scalia stated because the suit did not prove discrimination was a company-wide policy it had no basis. Interestingly the liberal brigade stated:

In a partial dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said there was enough evidence of systematic sex discrimination to allow the suit to proceed, though not for damages. "Women fill 70% of the hourly jobs in the retailer's stores, but make up only 33% of the management employees," she wrote. "The higher one looks in the organization, the lower the percentage of women."

Quoted from Los Angeles Times

Come on! Why is it automatically assumed that people (I'm not discriminating here) people who work at a certain place for more than five years are automatically qualified to manage the place? How can that be?

Walmart's managers do have considerable control -- pay scales, pay raises, promotions, and days off. However, the problem isn't with the Walmart managers, it is with this ruling brief quoted above...

I have certain qualms with this. A person does not learn how to manage by osmosis. It takes a great deal of training. Running the sports department and managing a store full of employees does have some of the same skills, but frankly managing people is much harder and much more crucial than keeping guns stocked, and ordering the right kind of tents.

I am not saying that 70% of Walmart's employees are not good, conscientious people. What I am saying is that there isn't a nation-wide company that has more than 33% women in management unless it is woman-owned. Corporate America is not kind to women.

Unless a woman has the kind of husband that works from home or wants to be the homemaker, a woman can't juggle the time involved in corporate management with being soccer mom. That is burning the candle at both ends which ends with no candle at all in a much shorter period of time. 

Rather than women v. men manager stats, I would love to see secret ballot employee votes on the best managers. It would probably be as many women as men -- or maybe not. Women bully women in the corporate world 71% of the time. (Workplace Bully Institute.org 2009 study).

Plus there's the old adage, if a person can't do the work -- promote him out of the department. So what's fair?

Absolutely nothing in this world is fair. We have to wait until we get to Heaven for that.