Liza Featherstone, a contributing editor at The Nation magazine, gave a lecture on Wal-Mart’s business practices Tuesday, examining the contentious issues surrounding the retail giant. The talk centered on the experience of Betty Dukes, a California pastor and Wal-Mart employee who has brought a class-action lawsuit against the discount mega-store for sex discrimination. Featherstone said that the federal judge who certified the class-action status that wrote it could have the importance of the famous Brown v. Board of Education case.
According to Featherstone, Dukes was originally attracted to Wal-Mart by its Christian reputation and her respect for Sam Walton, the company’s founder. Over time, Dukes, originally hired as a part-time cashier, found herself repeatedly turned down for advancement. Dukes noticed that positions continually went to men and friends of the store’s manager.
When Dukes complained, she was demoted. She then sued the company for violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which protects against workplace discrimination based on sex, race, religion, and national origin.
Featherstone argued that Dukes’ experience was consistent with those of other women employees in the company, who came across similar obstacles. She told of one woman who, when passed over for promotion, was placated by a supervisor who explained that God created men before women and that men, unlike women, need to work to feed their families.
“[The case is] one of the many ways that people are calling the Wal-Mart business model into question,” Featherstone said.
Women are not only relegated to lower positions on the company ladder, she said, but are also paid less for the same work.
Sex discrimination was just one of many illegal activities that Featherstone has witnessed in Wal-Mart’s business practices. She also cited abuse of overtime, including an example where managers locked their employees in the stores.
“These offenses evoke the dark days of the early twentieth century,” she said.
Featherstone added that Wal-Mart has recently paid $135,000 in fines for scores of violations of child labor laws, including allowing minors to operate chainsaws and forklifts. She also cited Wal-Mart practices that jeopardized the safety of immigrant workers who were exposed to harmful chemicals on the job.
Not all of the abuses Featherstone sees in the Wal-Mart business model are illegal, but she does not think that justifies them. She said that the low compensation and lack of benefits received by Wal-Mart employees violates the responsibility of the company to its community.
Featherstone said that internal company documents show that 46 percent of all Wal-Mart employees require Medicaid. A leaked memo from Susan Chambers, the Vice President for Benefits at Wal-Mart, suggested solving the problem by discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart.
Featherstone said that the costs to welfare are public costs not reflected on Wal-Mart shoppers’ receipts.
Despite increasingly negative perceptions of the store, Wal-Mart continues to be popular to consumers.
“Half of American women visit Wal-Mart at least once a week,” she said, also noting that the store is frequented by the working poor who rely on its discounts and convenient location.
When one Minnesota town was debating a proposed Wal-Mart, the local newspaper received many letters from women demanding that the store be allowed to open. Featherstone said that many of the Wal-Mart’s defenders claimed it was only rich people who opposed the store.
Featherstone provided context for Wal-Mart’s abuses and discussed the effectiveness of the advocacy groups who protest the company’s business practices.
“Wal-Mart is really a product of our hyper-consumerist culture,” Featherstone said. “As customers, are we always right?”
She said that shopping is predominant in America because it is one situation in which people can assume control of their economic lives. She said that while America is a good country for the customer, it is not for workers.
“The pressure campaign on Wal-Mart is unique,” Featherstone said, explaining that advocacy groups aim to not only change Wal-Mart’s business model, but also the entire concept of business in America.
She said that there have been “signs of hope” as Wal-Mart has responded to its critics by expanding health insurance to more part-time workers, promoting more women to management, using more energy-efficient trucks, and stocking emergency contraception drugs.
“The company’s right-wing ideology is sometimes at odds to making profits and will be expendable in some cases,” Featherstone said. “It’s interesting to see how far Wal-Mart will go to placate its critics.”
About twenty students and several professors attended the afternoon lecture, which followed a showing of a PBS special critical of Wal-Mart and the film “Why Wal-Mart Works and Why This Makes Some People C-R-A-Z-Y!” the night before.
“She did a really good job highlighting the reasons why so many people shop at Wal-Mart and why so many people oppose it without judging them,” said Tamar Greenspan ’06.
Greenspan said she particularly enjoyed Featherstone’s discussion of the “implicit contradiction of capitalism,” how Wal-Mart can create jobs, but not jobs that pay sufficiently.
“The whole question is, are these problems specific to Wal-Mart or are these problems part of the labor market at large?” said Assistant Professor of Economics Chris Hogendorn.
To him, the lecture suggested that the problems of Wal-Mart go beyond just one company, implying that the best remedies might not be protesting Wal-Mart but instead supporting government action like raising the minimum wage.
Featherstone is a contributing editor of The Nation magazine and has written as a freelance journalist for many major publications. About to begin teaching at the City University of New York, she is the author, most recently, of the book “Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart.”
She spoke at the invitation of Chair of Economics Professor Joyce Jacobsen. The lecture was sponsored by the Economics and Sociology Departments, the economics honor society Omicron Delta Epsilon, and the Urban Studies course cluster.
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