By Miguel Bustillo
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has agreed to pay $440,000 to settle a lawsuit by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of Mexican immigrant workers at a California Sam's Club who claimed they were harassed about their national origin by a Mexican-American colleague.
The EEOC lawsuit claimed that at least nine employees of Mexican descent, along with another worker married to a Mexican, endured ethnic slurs and derogatory remarks by a colleague.
The agency said the "near daily" insults included remarks that Mexicans were only good for cleaning homes. It said they were reported to superiors at the Sam's Club near Fresno in April 2006 yet went unchecked for months.
"It was very nasty verbal stuff, things we are not used to hearing, especially at work," recalled one of the alleged victims, Sofia Alvarez, 58, who came to the U.S. when she was a year old and is a naturalized U.S. citizen. "We complained to our supervisor and not much was done. This person was a top salesperson who knew her job. We got the picture that they believed whatever she was saying more than us."
Wal-Mart acknowledged the incidents in question but characterized them as an anomaly involving a single employee.
The worker behind the alleged harassment, whose name wasn't disclosed, was fired in December 2006.
"Sam's Club has strong policies against discrimination and harassment," said Wal-Mart spokesman Greg Rossiter. "This involved one associate at our Fresno club years ago."
The settlement of the Fresno harassment case comes at a politically sensitive time for the world's largest retailer. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering an enormous class-action lawsuit alleging that female Wal-Mart workers were systematically denied equal pay and promotions, the largest such legal matter in U.S. history.
Wal-Mart has vigorously argued that that case should not have class-action status because the alleged victims have too little in common. The company also has denied the claims, saying there was no systematic discrimination against women and no pattern of pay differential on a store-by-store basis.
Melissa Barrios, the head of the EEOC's office in Fresno, said the alleged behavior at Sam's Club went unaddressed too long. She said the complaints, which the agency says were a violation of the Civil Rights Act, had still not resulted in the removal of the employee even after the matter was being investigated by the EEOC.
"Sam's Club had been on notice about these particular claims, not only by workers but by the commission, and they were not moving very quickly to take action," Ms. Barrios said.
The alleged harasser and some of the other women in question were salespeople who offered customers food samples to taste. Sam's Club decided to outsource those jobs to a contractor last year, and Ms. Alvarez is no longer employed by the company.
