Walmart is slated to compensate a former female employee $60,000 to resolve a legal dispute in which she alleged that the company had unfairly denied her promotion.
In February 2022, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a lawsuit against Walmart. The lawsuit claimed that the company discriminated against a former female employee based on gender.
The allegation was that Walmart refused to promote her due to stereotypes about women with small children at home. The employee had taken maternity leave from October 2017 to January 2018 and, upon her return to the Ottumwa, Iowa store, applied for a managerial position in the pet department.
Despite encouragement from other managers, passing the manager’s test, and having at least three years more experience at Walmart than the selected candidate, the worker was not chosen for the role. When seeking feedback, she was informed that the company doubted her long-term commitment because she had small children at home.
In another lawsuit, the EEOC also accused Walmart of racial discrimination, asserting that the company provided the Black worker with an ‘unsanitary storage closet’ for expressing breast milk. This space was described as ‘cluttered and dirty,’ with dead bugs on the floor, in contrast to the clean office space provided to a white employees for the same purpose.
On 10 January, Walmart signed a consent decree agreeing to pay the former worker $30,000 in back pay and an additional $30,000 in compensatory damages to settle the claims, without admitting wrongdoing. The EEOC initiated the lawsuit after failed attempts to reach a conciliation agreement with the Arkansas-based retailer.
