women

Walmart is the largest private employer in this country and nearly 60% of its hourly employees are women. It sets the standards for the retail industry, its suppliers, and for employers in general. How Walmart treats women ultimately has ramifications for all women, not just those who work in its stores.

And unfortunately, according to many of its Associates, Walmart is not truly a place of opportunity for women. The company avoided accountability recently when the Supreme Court dismissed the class action status of Dukes v. Walmart, the largest sex discrimination case in history. And although (with much public relations fan-fare) Walmart just announced a “women friendly initiative,” the effort doesn’t address a core problem at Walmart: the way women who work there are treated.

Urge Walmart CEO Mike Duke to meet with OUR Walmart and national Women's groups

Struggling for the rights of workers at swollen multinational companies like Walmart or within the individual homes in which domestic workers toil is hard enough. But add onto this the additional hardship of being discriminated against based on a workers' gender and you really have a fight.

On Sunday, August 7th at the National Conference of Jobs with Justice, the members of the National Domestic Workers Alliance teamed up with the women of OUR Walmart to discuss the challenges and opportunities of organizing from the perspective of women. Domestic workers spoke about being discouraged from identifying as workers when employers called them "a part of the family", while Walmart Associates discussed making significantly lower wages than men doing the same job. Both were hopeful moving forward in campaigns to develop and strengthen a framework for collective bargaining for domestic workers and in outlining an enforceable anti-discrimination policy for Walmart to adopt.

The testimony was so moving, that Barbara Ehrenreich--author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America--remarked on Democracy Now surrounding the book's ten year anniversary:

Earlier today, the Supreme Court handed down a decision against the female plaintiffs in Walmart vs. Dukes, stopping the women of Walmart from filing a single class action lawsuit alleging that the company systematically discriminated against women in its pay and promotion practices.

Tomorrow, Jobs with Justice coalitions in cities across the country will join with allies in the women's movement to stand with the women of Walmart and to push for an end to Walmart's attempts to block legal access to women seeking justice. Rallies are planned in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, San Francisco, & more. FIND A RALLY NEAR YOU.

Photo by Wilson E. Allen

More than 400 Hoosiers rallied Tuesday, March 8, led by Planned Parenthood and supported by the Central Indiana Jobs with Justice coalition of  faith and labor partners, in response to several laws under consideration in the state legislature that attack community-based health care for women. Labor and faith leaders joined women's rights activists in calling on Hoosiers across the state to continue their courageous effort to defend the Hoosier majority from the anti-worker, anti-woman, anti-immigrant, anti-student legislative attack.