Obama - Here Is What A Fighter Looks Like

http://www.alternet.org/economy/149181/meet_the_woman_who%27s_fighting_back_against_wal_mart/

Meet the Woman Who's Fighting Back Against Wal Mart
"I'm demanding justice" says Betty Dukes, the brave woman who decided in 2001 to take on the world's largest retailer, Walmart Stores, Inc. for pay discrimination.

At first, "I found myself standing alone, but I wasn't standing alone," says Dukes, 60, who joined the retailer's Pittsburg, Calif., store in 1994 as a part-time cashier for $5 an hour.

Dukes, a native of Tallulah, La., saw the job as a chance to better her life by climbing the corporate management ladder at Walmart, she says. But in 1997, by which time she had advanced to the level of customer service manager, she found out that each step beyond that point was becoming steeper—and more frustrating. The company, she says, offered her little chance for advancement. She went to her many managers to complain, though that turned into an ongoing quarrel and eventually led to a demotion to cashier and pay cut of about 5 percent, she says.

Her struggle became central to the federal lawsuit, filed in June 2001 in the U.S. District Court. In late April 2010, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a decision allowing the case to go to trial as a class action on behalf of the millions of former and current female Walmart employees— which the suit says represent 72 percent of all hourly employees.

Dukes and the five other main plaintiffs charged in the suit that Walmart violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The retailer consistently paid its male employees more than women for the same work, and women have had to wait longer than men for promotions, they maintain.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that Ms Dukes and all win this case. I know that Wal - Mart has, is and will do everything they can to keep that from happening.

a permantently reduced price that is equivalent in percentage to the reduced pay for equal work that they pay women.

Or let's say that for as long as a woman with equal qualifications would have to wait for the same position as a man, all female customers refuse to buy anything at any Walmart at any price.

I wonder.... hmmm.

Yes, she is a fighter.
Win, Ma'am, win!!!

promotion. I also don't think this Dukes woman is a heroic figure--taking extra long breaks and opening the cash register for personal transactions, and then whining "everyone else does it too!" The other lady mentioned in the story (Arana) seems to have a better case for discrimination.

get away with doing. And employers can use it against an employee they are targeting for dismissal.

Regardless of these small infractions, she's got a good chance of winning.

which would have been a promotion for her until after it was filled by a man. Not very ethical.

I'm glad she's seeing this through. I think her chances of winning are very good.