Class action lawsuits a thing of the past?

[Muldur]

Some say that, but I don't think there's much basis for it. Wal-Mart's structure delegates broad discretion for pay and promotion decisions to individual store managers.

That is, at best, a polite legal fiction, one that WM is a master at deploying. They keep Bentonville's hands "clean" by not promulgating an official policy (like demanding that employee time-cards be falsified to prevent overtime, etc), but they set up the bonus schedule so that any OT comes out of the store managers' pay, and if his store clocks too much OT, then Bentonville jumps down his throat and in many cases fires him.

Bentonville is also the biggest pack of frakking liars on the planet, as has been documented both in the media and in court case after court case.

And if you look at the pattern of cases brought against WM, you see the exact same abuses (time card alterations, illegal lock ins, sexual discrimination, etc) over and over and over and over from WM stores all across the country.

There's a principle in reasoning that says an occasional occurrence is happenstance, repeated occurrences are suspect, and regular, repeated occurrences are proof of a systemic problem.

 

[Muldur]

On 16 April, 2013, the US Supreme Court dealt another blow to actions by groups for damages (opinion here). As I have said repeatedly, I am no fan of class actions for damages, but what five members of the Court did here has me scratching my head.

We have a 5-4 SCOTUS with the 5 all being appointees of blatant corporatist shills.

What's so hard to understand when they shiv the working man to benefit corporations?