You see the happy workers - women, naturally - talking about how great a place Wal-Mart is to work in the feel-good commercials currently on the airwaves.
What you do not hear about is the blatant sexual discrimination that Wal-Mart women face, the tales of which recently persuaded a judge to let a class-action suit go forward against America's largest private employer. The stories sound as if they are from the Dark Ages of Women in the Work Force - the sixties and seventies - when we were going to work in droves but bumping up against the glass ceiling every time we tried to stand up.
The charges are all too familiar: Women are paid less for the same jobs, even when they have more experience; they receive fewer promotions; they are denied entry into management-training programs that would move them into higher-paying salaried jobs.
One woman in the suit said that when she complained that a male manager with less experience was earning $23,000 a year more for the same job, she was told that he was a father with two children to support. That she was a single mother with a 6-month-old baby didn't count.
A labor economist who studied 20 discount retailers, including Wal-Mart, found that the giant retailer fell short in the number of women managers in nearly 80 percent of its stores. In-store management at Wal-Mart is approximately 35 percent female, while at similar retailers it is 57 percent. That's a gap of 22 percent. That's huge.
Wal-Mart may be in the headlines, but sex bias in employment is still rampant. The latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that, for every dollar a man makes, a woman makes just over 78 cents.
The gap is considerably less at the entry level (93.7) but widens with age, and is stuck around 75 cents for every dollar a man makes once a woman hits 35, or when she would be ready to move up. Some of this is undoubtedly the result of women taking lesser jobs because of family responsibilities, but the Wal-Mart suit shows not all of the wage differential can be dismissed so easily.
You would think that after watching other companies get hauled into court for the same kind of conduct detailed in the Wal-Mart suit, the company long ago would have smartened up to make sure this kind of stuff doesn't happen anymore. You would be wrong.
The company's defense is that each example of bias was isolated, and its lousy treatment of women does not emanate from the corporate culture. Indeed, Wal-Mart contends, this is a loosely structured company.
Now that's creative, considering what the judge found: Employees receive weekly "lessons" in corporate culture dictated from headquarters; all 3,586 stores get "Wal-Mart TV"; managers attend monthly meetings devoted to "one of the company's culture lessons." Even the temperature and music at every store is dictated from the Arkansas headquarters. Working for the discounter sounds more like joining a cult than simply having a job.
And these guys are claiming the trouble all stems from a couple of bad apples in the bunch?
When I co-authored "The Best Companies for Women" more than a decade ago, we found that how a company treats women, good or bad, comes directly from the top.
The guy - it's usually a guy - in charge sets the tone, directs policy and sees that it is either followed or ignored. The corporate culture is what he wants it to be. At those companies where women and minorities were paid and promoted on an equal basis with white men, every single time the person in the biggest office made it happen.
Companies could have plenty of high-toned policies on the books. But, without the CEO urging that women be treated as equals, it didn't happen. The men lower down the pecking order just never felt it was necessary to see that women got ahead. When promotions to senior management were discussed, women's names rarely came up.
Unless the CEO said: Do it. It looks like Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott didn't include this in the lesson plans for his managers. Looks like he forgot that the kind of blatant discrimination Wal-Mart is accused of is against the law.
Lorraine Dusky's most recent book is "Still Unequal: The Shameful Truth about Women and Justice in America."
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