US retail giant Wal-Mart to fight ruling in suit
8/2/2007 16:24
US giant retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc., following a legal setback in a
sex-discrimination suit involving billions of dollars in claims, said it will
contest the decision and ask for a larger appeals-court panel to rehear the
case, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.
A three-judge panel of the
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Tuesday affirmed class-action
status for a suit alleging gender discrimination in pay and promotion.
More
than 1.5 million past and present female Wal-Mart employees are included in the
suit.
Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer by revenue, said it would ask a
15-member panel of the Ninth Circuit Court to review the case. The retailer said
it would appeal to the US Supreme Court, if needed.
The appeals court
rejected Wal-Mart's argument that class- action status shouldn't be allowed
because its stores are individually managed and run, saying there was
"substantial evidence" of centralized policies.
The suit, filed in 2001 by
six female employees, alleges the Bentonville, Ark. retailer systematically paid
women with similar qualifications less than men and frequently overlooked women
for promotions.
Persuaded by the plaintiffs' statistical data that Wal-Mart
paid women workers 5 percent to 15 percent less than men in comparable jobs, a
federal district court judge in San Francisco ruled in 2004 that the lawsuit
could apply to all women who have worked for Wal-Mart since December
1998.
According to the report, the largest sex-discrimination settlement to
date has been a US$508 million payment by the federal government to 1,100 women
who said they were denies jobs at the Voice of America and the US Information
Agency.
A US$240 million settlement in 1992 by State Farm Insurance is the
biggest corporate gender-bias settlement to date.
Xinhua
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