An employer once said to me “if we accomodate that employee beyond the legal minimum, we might have to accomodate everyone.” This was in reference to a request to allow the employee to use the hospital oxygen at their desk, instead of having to tote their own tanks and use them during their shift.
In this case, Walmart did the math and decided it was cheaper to fight this employee using their on staff lawyers than to be nice to the emplyoee. Until we make treating people like shit more expensive than paying a CEO, this beahvior will continue.
Because as they are a legal fiction, no one can drag them out of their house and beat the shit out of them personally in person when they do this kind of egregious bullshit. A-fucking-gain.
Seeing Walmart refered to “it” makes me wonder what corporations proper pronouns are? Would it be like romance languages where there’s strict masculine or feminine nouns?
I am often reminded of something my father said, “Never trust a company that makes a show about how happy their employees are to work for them in their ad campaigns.”
Good grief, seeing this sort of thing makes me really appreciate the assorted places I’ve worked over my life - every single one of them, right down to the tourist trap parking lots I worked in as a teenager in the late '80s/early '90s were very focused on making sure everyone working there knew their employee rights, people with disabilities were accommodated, and everyone was treated fairly.
One of my co-workers in the parking lot had severe birth defects, and we had extra equipment added to our golf-cart so he could still drive it properly even though his arms didn’t bend in the right directions to hold a normal steering wheel. They did this in the '80s. If a minimum wage seasonal employer with ~30 staff including management in the 80s can manage this stuff and still turn a large profit, why the heck can’t a modern megacorporation?
Seeing Walmart refered to “it” makes me wonder what corporations proper pronouns are? Would it be like romance languages where there’s strict masculine or feminine nouns?
I suggest the statutory minimum be set to the pay of the owner + 1 days profits for a business and the pay of the CEO + 7 days profits for a corporation.
I’ll bet that’s a hell of a lot more than 350k.
edit - for walmart in 2020 - a weeks profits would have been over 2 billion dollars.
Judge William Griesbach denied the commission’s request that Walmart be ordered to train managers to understand the Americans with Disabilities Act and to inform employees of their legal rights.
I came here to ask someone with more knowledge of legal matters what possible justification there could be for denying this request. To me it seems like the judge is being asked “can we also do something which will benefit everyone and prevent this sort of behavior from happening in the future?” and the judge is just giving a flat “NO.” One gets the feeling the judge very much resents having to rule against Walmart in the first place.
I’ve had the misfortune of both shopping in and at one point working for the local Walmart. I avoid doing the former whenever possible (which thanks to a couple local alternatives and the rise of Amazon is about 100% of the time) and as for the latter… it was truly an act of desperation intended to get me through some rough financial months.
I have a corollary to this based, sadly, on personal experience. If the company is getting bad press and they start having employee rallies and handing out t-shirts.
Singular in the U.S., plural in the U.K. Phrases like “Apple have announced” are a nice Brit shibboleth. The British practice is troublesome, as the purpose of a corporation is to be a singular entity independent of the human beings in it. But I suppose this usage literally predates legal incorporation in any modern sense, so we can cut them slack.
“Judge William Griesbach denied the commission’s request that Walmart be ordered to train managers to understand the Americans with Disabilities Act and to inform employees of their legal rights.”
I am at a complete loss to understand why this was not ordered as it seems eminently reasonable and an appropriate remedy within the Court’s powers.
Does anyone have a link to the legal opinion or similar? I’d like to hear the legal arguments against doing this if they were expressed.
