According to reports, three Tennessee long time female employees of Walmart recently filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the giant shop retailer before the federal court of Nashville.
According to the charge, complainants Cheryl Phipps, Bobbi Millner, and Shawn Gibbons have spent between 11 and 26 years working for the company’s retail stores in three different towns in Tennessee. They claimed that they were being denied for promotions, accusing the huge retailer of intentionally discriminating against women.
Aside from being passed over for promotions, they were also paid less than men who were doing similar jobs as theirs. The women further claimed that although they informed the retailer’s management about their concerns, the latter failed to act on the matter.
Allegedly, the women were told by a store manager that they cannot be promoted to management post since it was a man’s job.
The women are seeking for unspecified damages in their lawsuit and are anticipating that the said lawsuit will help hundreds of thousands of other women who suffered employment discrimination from Walmart stores.
Incidentally, it is not the first time that Walmart is being sued for employment discrimination on the basis of gender by its female employees.
It can be recalled that in 2011, the Supreme Court dismissed a class action lawsuit against the giant retailer brought by an overwhelming 1.5 million female employees. It was in fact, the largest gender discrimination lawsuit in the U.S. history.
According to the said ruling, the court found that the women’s jobs were too varied to qualify as a class action lawsuit. However, the same did not bar possible future class action lawsuits such as this one.
On a related note, a Los Angeles labor lawyer explained that as opposed to harassment, which deals with proper legal actions taken against the employee, employment discrimination claim arises from actual employment practices including promotions, wages, and benefits.
