[Vision2020] And We Want Walmart to Stay?

[Wayne Price]

And to think OUR CITY COUNCIL wants them to stay now!

Court: Wal-Mart to face massive class action suit
AP/11:38 am

SAN FRANCISCO — A sharply divided federal appeals court on Monday  
exposed Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to billions of dollars in legal damages  
when it ruled a massive class action lawsuit alleging gender  
discrimination over pay for female workers can go to trial.
In its 6-5 ruling, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said the  
world's largest private employer will have to face charges that it  
pays women less than men for the same jobs and that female employees  
receive fewer promotions and have to wait longer for those promotions  
than male counterparts.
The retailer, based in Bentonville, Ark., has fiercely fought the  
lawsuit since it was first filed by six women in federal court in San  
Francisco in 2001, losing two previous rulings in the trial court and  
again in the appeals court in 2007.
Wal-Mart successfully convinced the appeals court to revisit its 2007  
ruling made by a three-judge panel with a larger 11-judge panel,  
arguing that women who allege discrimination should file individual  
lawsuits. The retailer argued that the number of litigants that the  
lawsuit purports to represent is too big to defend.
"Although the size of this class action is large, mere size does not  
render a case unmanageable," Judge Michael Daly Hawkins wrote for the  
majority court, which didn't address the merits of the lawsuit,  
leaving that for the trial court.
Judge Sandra Ikuta wrote a blistering dissent, joined by four of her  
colleagues.
"No court has ever certified a class like this one, until now. And  
with good reason," Ikuta wrote. "In this case, six women who have  
worked in thirteen of Wal-Marts 3,400 stores seek to represent every  
woman who has worked in those stores over the course of the last  
decade — a class estimated in 2001 to include more than 1.5 million  
women."
A Wal-Mart representative said the retailer was preparing a statement.
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