Ethics Paper: Equal Pay for Equal Work
Mini Paper: Male and Female Leaders
There are four ethics papers in the course, each requiring you to review information on a particular ethical issue, seek additional information on the topic, and integrate the course material.
This paper is focuses on the question of equal pay for equal work. This is a long-debated workplace issue for which statistics still demonstrate inequality for women.
In 2001, Betty Dukes from Pittsburg, California, filed a sex discrimination claim based on promotion and pay against her employer Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer. What started as complaints to her supervisors over lost promotion opportunities and perceived retaliatory measures against her has turned into what could have been the biggest class-action lawsuit in U.S. history. She filed her lawsuit on behalf of every female who is or has been employed at the company since 1998 (1.5 million women).
Moved forward by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the determination of whether this qualified as a class-action suit or not was recently heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court's decision disqualified the class action status of the case and is a monumental victory for Wal-Mart as a class-action lawsuit would have cost the company billions of dollars. This decision impacted other corporations as well who were facing gender-based pay and other forms of discrimination suits.
The pivotal issue was whether a large employer like Wal-Mart that gives store managers almost complete discretion in evaluating employees for promotions and pay raises can be sued by groups of employees across those stores, in effect, saying that such discrimination was the result of a corporate-level policy. Many legal experts believed there was not enough evidence to suggest this, but the issue of pay discrimination is still a serious one that Wal-Mart needs to address.
In your paper on this issue, you are expected to cover the following:
1. Review and summarize this case, using credible internet sources.
2. Identify and discuss the ethical issues involved when a corporation as prominent and economically powerful as Wal-Mart is accused of discriminating against women in pay and promotion decisions.
3. Discuss what steps organizations can or should take to ensure pay equity among men and women.
The resulting paper should be a summary and analysis of the ethical issues involved. Organize your paper into the following sections:
1. Title page
2. Table of Contents
3. Introduction (1-2 paragraphs summarizing the task for this assignment)
4. Background (brief description of the Wal-Mart sex discrimination in pay case and identification of ethical issues involved)
5. Analysis (brief analysis of the ethical issues you've uncovered, the way they relate specifically to the course material with regard to gender-based pay discrimination, and the way companies can address these issues)
6. Conclusion (1-2 paragraph review of your findings)
7. References
Work should be submitted in a Word document, 2-3 pages in length (excluding the title, the table of contents and the references pages),
typed double-space in 10- or 12-point Arial or Times New Roman font. The page margins on the top, bottom, left side, and right side should be 1 inch each. Use APA guidelines for citing and referencing sources.