Walmart is the biggest private employer in the world, has the biggest annual revenue, and earns the 9th largest profits.
The Supreme Court is currently considering whether a massive class-action lawsuit claiming to represent all million-plus female employees of Walmart can go forward based on disparate impact statistics.
The crude view of discrimination is the standard Who-Whom one, which assumes that of course Walmart pays less to women because Walmart is run by white men, who are evil.
A more sophisticated view is the Malcolm Gladwellian one. Back in the 1950s, Gary Becker wrote his doctoral thesis for his adviser, Milton Friedman, on how discrimination is economically irrational because it costs the employer profits. If you pay below the market rate, you get lousier employees and customers go away.
In a section in Blink on how car salesmen charge women and blacks more money, Gladwell added a new level to the U. of Chicago theory: Discrimination happens not because business executives are evil but because their consciousnesses about their biased implicit associations haven't yet been raised by expensive-enough guest speakers at their annual sales conventions. Walmart executives, like car salesmen, are, when you stop and think about it, the real victims here. They're leaving money on the table because they don't realize that they don't realize that everybody is equal, which everybody is, of course. That goes without saying.
In my experience, however, Walmart never leaves money on the table.
Walmart also imports more of its products from China than Africa.
ReplyDeleteRacist!
Walmart also has more stores in small towns and suburbs than in big cities.
ReplyDeleteRacist.
Walmart indeed never leaves money on the table, or even on the floors. They pay Mexicans to scoot around and pick up pennies which customers drop while fumbling with their underwear packets and Easter candy. Walmart then pays the "scooters" commission with no salary.
ReplyDeleteFun with HBD & corporate greed is the best kind of fun.
The gray haired black plaintiff spoke ebonics in a television interview. And she thinks she is qualified for a management job?
ReplyDelete"The gray haired black plaintiff spoke ebonics in a television interview. And she thinks she is qualified for a management job?"
ReplyDeleteAre you gonna tell her she isn't, bigot?
In a section in Blink on how car salesmen charge women and blacks more money, Gladwell added a new level to the U. of Chicago theory...
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like the way car mechanics overcharge university professors. Class action suit, anyone? Time to show those bestial grease monkeys who's boss!
The gray haired black plaintiff spoke ebonics in a television interview. And she thinks she is qualified for a management job?
ReplyDeleteAt least she's vibrant, and not some gormless geek in a Star Trek uniform and no street cred.
Since the HOUSING BUBBLE went pop and kaput, let's now have the HIRING BUBBLE.
ReplyDeleteFrom fixing disparate impact in home loans to fixing disparate impact in hiring.
Maybe we need a system where substandard workers are rated as 'excellent' and 'very qualified', hired and promoted to all manner of high positions, and what losses Walmart suffers can be packaged and sold as profits to OTHER companies through the all-purpose institution of Wall Street.
Wall Street, please come to the rescue of Walmart and its employees by cooking some program that will gain bi-partisan support.
Promotionship Society, where it's a RIGHT for everyone to be hired and promoted.
"gormless geek in a Star Trek uniform"
ReplyDeleteWhoopi Goldberg?
Steve, you're being unreasonable here. I'm sure that Wal Mart is simply in desperate need of the Supreme Court and the Justice Department, to help them become more economically rational.
ReplyDelete"Walmart also has more stores in small towns and suburbs than in big cities.
ReplyDeleteRacist."
Initially, that was by choice, but more recently, Walmart's been itching to get into big cities. Big city pols (in New York, Chicago) have kept them out.
I hate Walmart and Affirmative Action/Women's Rights with equal vigor.
ReplyDeleteWho should I be rooting for?
Wal-Mart is doomed. It's like that episode on Seinfeld where Jackie Childs practically falls over in excitement when Kramer wants to sue Big Tobacco.
ReplyDeleteWal-Mart is a big fat target that will never know what hit them. And everyone else that size will be next. Indeed every business. Lawyers and diversity organizers have to eat, after all.
Target paid close to $100 million in a disparate impact lawsuit a few years ago because too many men were doing the plumbing, flooring, and lumber type sales jobs and too many women were doing the cashier jobs.
ReplyDeleteI know this because it was in my textbook on employment law, and I had to write a paper on it.
Disparate impact is ridiculous. If people knew how it worked (and had a chance to vote on it) it would be eliminated.
"Target paid close to $100 million in a disparate impact lawsuit a few years ago because too many men were doing the plumbing, flooring, and lumber type sales jobs and too many women were doing the cashier jobs."
ReplyDeleteMen should have sued for being discriminated in cashier jobs.
WalMart bashing is also a who-whom thing lately. It is very politically correct thing to try to hurt WalMart any way possible because they are the epitome of the big evil corporation.
ReplyDeleteI can see why men at Walmart get paid more. They are the ones transporting heavy loads into the store, wielding the box cutters, setting up the new displays, or fixing the toilets. They always seem to be going somewhere or doing something. The women are either working at the cash registers -- where they seem unable to do simple math (ask them to give you some extra dimes and quarters in your change some time) -- or walking the floor, tidying up the merchandise which has been manhandled by the third world customers.
ReplyDeleteWhen I worked low pay jobs in retailing as a youth, I observed that women tend to wait around to be told what to do, whereas the (non-black) men went out looking for ways to keep busy. They showed no remorse to other men who sat around on their lazy asses. Women, on the other hand, thought nothing of going off in a corner and chatting on the bosses time.
"Wal-Mart is doomed."
ReplyDeleteOK, the world's largest retailer is now "doomed."
I think that we can chalk that up as another brilliant, Whiskey Bon Mot.
In my experience, however, Walmart never leaves money on the table.
ReplyDeleteExactly. It's well-known among people that pay attention to such things women will work for less. Anytime a career gets co-opted by women wages for that career drop. Walmart paid women less because they would work for less. It's as simple as that. There was no sinister plot to keep women down, just a top to bottom Scottish compulsion to wring out every last penny of cost.
What Walmart is running into, and as the plaintiff lawyers know perfectly well, is that a "class"/group of 1 million is going to display every demographic tendency there is. That women will work for less, and that women will chase after fewer promotions, are the ones on display in this suit.
On the contrary, imagine the amount of reverse discrimination it would take on the part of Walmart to buck the bell curve in a group of 1 million!
Employment discrimination is all around us!
ReplyDeleteIt is a C-O-N-spiracy, my brother!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3LNWWYVabs
Lumber, flooring, plumbing supplies at Target?? Who knew.
ReplyDeleteSteve didn't you once work for Wal-Mart?
ReplyDeleteA lot of this nonsense may be blamed on innumeracy on the bench. Maybe when all the lawyers and judges have taken Algebra II, it will get better.
Albertosaurus
Thripshaw, I think you mean Home Depot. Yes?
ReplyDeleteJoe
Steve didn't work for Wal-Mart. He was just subjected to their sweltering negotiating rooms and lousy lunches used to make suppliers give in and go home.
ReplyDeleteThe reason for the case isn't to get trillions out of walmart, its to get recognization for gender discrimination. Even though women have equal rights they are still not treated equally. They often take less pay than a male for doing a similiar job. Honestly what is the true difference between male and female other than their looks?
ReplyDelete