Equal Frustration For Different Women

The Supreme Court committed the biggest assault on the rights of female workers and workers in general since Friday. A Wal-Mart worker named Betty Dukes led an attempt by women to sue collectively against the giant retailer for sex discrimination typified by receiving lower pay and fewer promotions. But in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., v. Betty Dukes, et al., the Court ruled this past Monday in a 5-4 decision that female employees Wal-Mart women could not band together in a single class-action lawsuit because the individual cases were found not to be similar enough in nature to comprise a single class. Justice Antonin Scalia, the kind of patriarchal fellow my Italian-American mother would call "the bigga da boss," wrote so for the conservative majority.

Scalia said that the women could still sue Wal-Mart individually. Great news, until you realize that individual cases would clog the judicial system and take much longer to resolve, and that Wal-Mart has little interest in settling on a case-by-case basis, which mean most of these women don't have a snowball's chance in Borneo of winning. A people united will never be divided, but if they have to divide, they're easier to conquer.

But the fight for fair pay is far from over - or so the National Women's Law center would have you believe. They are getting behind a bill pending in Congress, the Paycheck Fairness Act, and urging its swift passage. The Paycheck Fairness Act is meant to increase enforcement of the Equal Pay Act (which was passed in 1963), train people to enforce the law, and allow permit employees to share salary information with co-workers without punishment. A second bill, the Fair Pay Act, would require an employer to pay equal salaries for equivalent jobs, regardless of race, gender, or national origin of their employees.

Good luck with any of that happening soon. The Republican majority in the House and the filibuster-capable Republican minority in the Senate will be quick to express their opposition to either bill, and the argument will go like this: "It just so happens that they comprise government intervention into the affairs of private business, enforcement of the law means more government control over the private sector, and it disrespects the fact that God made men and women different, so shut the hell up, you feminist pinko subversives!!!"

If you don't have enough reasons to boycott Wal-Mart, this should do it. You can do without all that cheap Chinese plastic they sell.

"Stop comparing everything to the Nazis. Republicans aren't like the Nazis. Even neo-Nazis aren't like the Nazis. Nothing is like the Nazis. Except Wal-Mart." - Bill Maher