link

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.