Keep our eye on the ball. I'm sure the Waltons are doing a great dance over in Bentonville, Arkansas in light of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling blocking a class-action suit against the companythat, had it been successful, would have likely cost the company billions of dollars in damages. But, let's be clear: Wal-Mart is a scar on the country.
On the case itself, just let it be said that the ruling does not say Wal-Mart did not discriminate. It simply said that the plaintiffs could not prove that they shared common characteristics that would make them eligible to pursue the case as a class-action suit. that isn't a trivial matter, to be sure--it would be almost impossible, cost-wise, for the hundreds of thousands of women who were harmed by discrimination to pursue these cases individually.
But, the record is also clear that:
Wal-Mart is a habitual violator of wage-and-hour laws and a whole host of other workplace standards.
The company is viciously anti-union, which has essentially forced the United Food and Commercial Workers to turn to a non-traditional way of organizing the workers.
Wal-Mart shoves down its workers' throats pathetic health care coverage--and then lies about the coverage.
Wal-Mart is a habitual tax dodger.
Wal-Mart led a worldwide effort to undermine wages because Wal-Mart's whole business model is based on poverty: poverty of the people who work for its crappy wages and the poverty of the poor people who shop at Wal-Mart because they can't afford, in an economy in which wages have been essentially flat for thirty years, to shop anywhere else.
Oh, and don't forgetDebbie Shank, the disabled woman who Wal-Mart pursued to get back money for an insurance settlement Shank won.
Wal-Mart most recently manipulated its own internal executive compensation so it could boost the CEO's multi-million dollar pay package--while ending last year its profit-sharing program for the peons.
Wal-Mart faces a discrimination suit filed by Muslims who worked for the company and allege it is anti-Muslim.
There is one silver lining in the Supreme Court decision--I suppose Alice Walton will not have to worry about whether she has to cut back on buying expensive paintingsfinanced by the poverty machine called Wal-Mart.
So, remember, Wal-Mart is a rapacious company, led by modern-day Robber Barons (the Ace of Spades in the kingdom of the Audacity of Greed) who do not care about the people who toil in the stores or the people forced to lay down hard-earned cash at the registers.