February 09, 2010

A Wal-Mart in Colorado is accused of discriminatory actions. Ten West African men (that were from three Wal-Mart stores in Colorado) filed a complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. They said they had all worked for Wal-Mart for a fear years, mostly without incident. Then after a management change, they said they started to experience discrimination. Six complainants said their new manager at the Avon store called a meeting of virtually all the West African employees and said, "I don't like some of the faces I see here. There are people in Eagle County who need jobs." Three other complainants that worked at the Glenwood Springs store said that an assistant manager also made similar comments at a meeting of mostly West African workers. They say that the assistant manager said to the West Africans, "Wow, there are a lot of Africans, and I don't like some of the faces I see here."

After this, these employees said they were repeatedly disciplined for not meeting production requirements or working fast enough. Eventually, they were all fired. Most of the workers had never previously been reprimanded. They say that non-African workers were not held to the same standards and were not subject to the same criticism. One complainant, that had been working at Wal-Mart for three years, was suddenly fired for not stocking shelves fast enough. Another, aged 61, said he was fired after supervisors told him he had to greatly increase the number of boxes he was stocking. He said he was not physically able to keep up. He said, "I worked here for more than three years and never had any complaints about my job. Now, we have all been getting fired. We felt it was racism." A former assistant manager at the store in Avon, who quit because the job became too stressful, said her supervisors had pressured her to discipline the West African men for not working fast enough, even though she believed they were performing well. She said, "They were trying to get most of the Africans out. A lot of them had been there for a long time. They weren't being treated right."

All 10 of the complainants, who are also Muslim, said they were also refused short prayer breaks -- while other White and Hispanic workers were permitted unscheduled cigarette breaks. All of the complainants are seeking back pay. Wal-Mart denied the prayer break accusation and a spokesman for the company said that Wal-Mart follows the law with respect to requests for religious accommodation. The spokesman also denied that the West Africans had been singled out for discipline; he said many other workers had been laid off as well. He added, "Since that time, the Avon store has continued to hire and promote West African associates" and that three West Africans were promoted to supervisory positions last year.

This isn't the first time Wal-Mart has been accused of discriminatory actions. Since the mid-1990s, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed about 60 employment-discrimination lawsuits against Wal-Mart. Last year, Wal-Mart agreed to pay $17.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of African-Americans applying for jobs as truck drivers who said they were discriminated again. Currently, the company is facing the largest employment-discrimination class-action lawsuit in American history. It's a sexual-discrimination lawsuit brought on behalf of more than 1.5 million women who are current or former employees. (Full Story)