Thread: Retail Giant Offers Diversity Defense (Wal-Mart)

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Retail Giant Offers Diversity Defense
April 8, 2005
Maria Halkias

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s diversity executives tried to build a case Wednesday that the world's largest retailer cares about hiring and promoting women and minorities and that it stacks up favorably against its peers.

The biggest private U.S. employer, with 1.2 million workers, established an office of diversity in November 2003 as it came under repeated criticism for its labor practices and as a plethora of lawsuits and investigations accelerated the barrage of bad news.

Chief diversity officer Charlyn Jarrells Porter told about 50 reporters invited to a two-day media conference that Wal-Mart's diversity at various levels is comparable to U.S. averages from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

For example, she said that 34.7 percent of officers and managers were women at all U.S. companies vs. 35.06 percent at Wal-Mart in 2002, the most recent year available for national figures. Last year, Ms. Porter said, that number rose to 38.25 percent at Wal-Mart.

There's more at stake for Wal-Mart than its image. The company, based in Bentonville, Ark., is appealing a judge's decision to grant class-action status for up to 1.6 million current and former female employees who say Wal-Mart discriminated against them because of their gender.

Joseph Sellers, one of the lead lawyers in that case, said Wednesday that although Wal-Mart has probably made strides in the last three years, the retailer probably continues to rank behind its peers in employing women as managers.

"I don't think there's any question that since our case was filed three years ago, Wal-Mart has taken measures that it believes improve the workplace," he said.

Wal-Mart should be benchmarking itself against the retail industry instead of U.S. business overall, Mr. Sellers said.

He cited a study by labor economist Mark Bendick showing that in the retail industry, about two-thirds of a company's hourly positions, on average, are held by women and about two-thirds of management positions are held by women. Mr. Sellers said that although two-thirds of hourly employees are women at Wal-Mart, only one-third are managers.

"Wal-Mart is out of step in its own industry," Mr. Sellers said.

Ms. Porter showed a slide Wednesday that said Wal-Mart employs 775,000 women and that women make up 72.7 percent of its hourly workforce.

Former Dollar General Corp. president Lawrence Jackson, who joined Wal-Mart in October as executive vice president of people, said his company's efforts are "turbocharged" when it comes to measuring and establishing consequences and accountability in areas of diversity.

Ms. Porter said Wal-Mart has created programs for women and minority hourly supervisors, setting up mentoring pools, among other initiatives.

Even so, Wal-Mart has to do a better job of communicating to its own workers, Ms. Porter said.

"Wal-Mart is mentioned more than 500 times per day in news reports and opinion pieces, many times with misrepresentations of the facts," she said.

Ms. Porter said the commitment to diversity is coming from the top, as evidenced by Wal-Mart's board makeup, which she said includes two blacks, two Hispanics and one woman.

Last year at Wal-Mart's annual meeting, chief executive Lee Scott announced that incentive bonuses for top management would be tied to achieving diversity goals.

You know I'm really getting sick of this diversity bs. This has nothing to do with race, but whatever happened to hiring the best person available regardless of race. I mean why does it matter whether you hire a black person, a white person, a hispanic person, an asian person or whatever? If I was a business owner I could care less if I had employees who were one and the same skin color. If they can do the job better than anyone else available then what does it matter what skin color they are? But instead of going for the best person available to do the job, we're more concerned with quotas on skin color. Gotta have a certain amount of blacks, hispanics, asians, etc, etc. Then they go about lowering the standards to meet these quotas, but yet will deny a white person who probably is better for the job available.

Someone tell me what's wrong with this picture. You hire a white person over a minority because that white person is better for the job and they call it racism, but you hire a less qualified minority over a white person and they call it diversity. I'm sorry, but that's crap. Affirmative action needs to be abolished. Don't tell me I'm a racist for feeling this way. If I was a business owner and a minority was more qualified to handle the job available then a white person I would take the minority no question, but it would have nothing to do with his/her skin color. I'm just so sick of the double standards, that's all.

Same thing with women in law enforcement. No offense to women, but if I'm a criminal and say I was about to rob a bank and if I had a preference as to the gender of the security guard I would rather face to get to the money vault, I'd be far less afraid of a woman then a man. Don't even get me started as to why I feel that way because it's common sense as to why. Yet because of diversity and other feel good PC nonsense, we have to have a certain amount of women in law enforcement and in the military too and I just don't think they should be put in those types of jobs (at least not out in the line of danger). I'm not saying that to be offensive, but I just believe that being in the line of danger is no place for a woman IMO. 9 times out of 10 a male aggressor is going to be able to easily outpower and over take a female security guard, police officer, military, whatever. It's just a fact of life.

What can I say, but Savage is right. Liberalism is a mental disorder. Lefties can't decipher emotion from reality because they are so mentally warped. They let phony equality and civil rights get in the way of common sense and it's killing our country and it's borders, language and culture.

I apologize in advance if anyone took offense to what I just said. I don't intend it to be offensive, but I just don't know how to say it any better than this.

Years ago when the civil rights thing became big news...it was the law that a certain number of minorities had to be hired. If they weren't a suit could be brought.
I read in Reader's Digest some years ago that a business was sued b/c they didn't have a certain number of minorites...not only that, but every minority person who MIGHT have been hired had a right to sue....every person who had filed an application with that company-minority person, that is--had the right to bring suit. Needless to say this suit destroyed the small business that the owner had spent years building.

This has been the most ridiculous law that was ever put on the books, this disturbed companies that had employed the same persons for years, didn't even need to hire anyone...but still could be sued for NOT hiring. sheesh

Not long ago my husband was operating as a subcontractor..a couple of blacks came (without knowledge or experience of the job) and applied for work with us. At that point we had a full crew and didn't need anyone. Soon we were getting letters from the state about 'why we hadn't hired those persons'...yep...pure old harrassment on the part of the would-be employees and the state. I was stunned with the first letter and follow up phone call...didn't even remember who these persons were as they'd talked to my husband on the site. About the third time that the state called me...I told them that we weren't hiring...hadn't hired anyone..didn't expect to hire anyone..had never advertised a job opening, etc. I told them VERY firmly...and they left us alone then.

If someone that's a minority decides to harrass a company..they can sure do it. Our situation didn't become complicated as it could have. Others have not been so lucky.

RR