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JOCELYN
D. LARKIN (SBN 110817) THE
IMPACT FUND 125
University Avenue Berkeley,
CA 94710 Telephone: (510)
845-3473 Facsimile: (510) 845-3654 |
JOSEPH
SELLERS CHRISTINE
WEBBER COHEN,
MILSTEIN, HAUSFELD & TOLL West
Tower – Suite 500 1100
New York Avenue Washington,
D.C. 20005-3964 Telephone: (202) 408-4600 Facsimile: (202) 408-4699 |
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SHEILA
Y. THOMAS (SBN 161403) DORIS
Y. NG (SBN 169544) EQUAL
RIGHTS ADVOCATES 1663
Mission Street, Suite 250 San
Francisco, CA 94103 Telephone: (415)
621-0672 Facsimile: (415) 621-6744 |
STEPHEN
TINKLER MERIT
BENNETT TINKLER
& BENNETT 309
Johnson Street Santa
Fe, New Mexico 87501 Telephone: (505) 986-0269 Facsimile: (505) 982-6698 |
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STEVE
STEMERMAN (SBN 067690) ELIZABETH
LAWRENCE (SBN 111781) DAVIS,
COWELL & BOWE 100
Van Ness Avenue, 20th Floor San
Francisco, CA 94102 Telephone: (415)
626-1880 Facsimile: (415)
626-2860 |
DEBRA
GARDNER PUBLIC
JUSTICE CENTER 500
East Lexington Street Baltimore,
MD 21202 Telephone: (410) 625-9409 Facsimile: (410) 625-9423 |
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SHAUNA
MARSHALL (SBN 90641) HASTINGS
COLLEGE OF THE LAW 200
McAllister Street San Francisco, CA 94102 Telephone: (415)
565-4685 Facsimile: (415) 626-2860 Attorneys for Plaintiffs |
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UNITED
STATES DISTRICT COURT
I, Melissa Howard, declare:
1.
I have personal
knowledge of the facts contained in this declaration and, if called as a
witness, am competent to testify to those facts.
2.
I am female and 35
years old. I live in Indianapolis,
Indiana with my daughter, Mikaela, who is seven years old.
3.
I was hired by
Wal-Mart Stores in August 1992. I was
placed as a department manager in Electronics in the New Castle, Indiana
Wal-Mart store., earning $6.00 per hour.
At the time I was hired, I had six years of retail experience with
K-Mart, including supervisory experience as a department manager and support
team manager.
4.
I entered Wal-Mart’s Assistant Manager
training program in June 1993 and was trained at the Muncie, Indiana
store. When I started training, I wrote
that my long-term goals were to work my way up the ladder to store manager,
district manager and ultimately regional manager. Attached hereto as Exhibit A is a true and
correct copy of March 23, 1993 trainee evaluation.
5.
Following my
training, I returned as the Third Shift Assistant Manager to the Newcastle
store, which meant that I worked nights managing unloading and stocking. I was transferred to the Watsecka, Illinois
store where I was the Assistant Manager for Hardlines. I was the only female in management. Within the year, I was the Lead Assistant
Manager, meaning that I was responsible for signatures and reports in the store
manager’s absence. In February 1994, I
received an “exceeds expectations” rating on my performance evaluation. I wrote
on my evaluation that I wanted to be a store manager by the time I was 30, and
then move up to district manager.
Attached hereto as Exhibit B is a true and correct copy of my February
4, 1994 evaluation.
6.
I resigned from
Wal-Mart in September 1994 because of an incident with Regional Vice President
John Waters. In the course of a store
tour, Mr. Waters loudly berated me about designating plastic spoons as
non-replenishable items. He yelled and
belittled me in front of my hourly clerks as well as other management staff and
questioned how I could be an assistant manager.
The District Manager, John DiPasquale, who was also on the store tour,
tried to come to my defense, telling Mr. Waters that I had in fact acted
properly with respect to the plastic spoons.
This did not deter Mr. Waters.
7.
Later I decided
to use the Open Door Policy and spoke with District Manager DiPasquale about
the incident. He told me that things
would not change with Mr. Waters and that I just needed to “take the shit and
let it roll.” I did not want to be
treated this way in the future so I resigned.
8. Shortly thereafter, I
learned that Wal-Mart Divisional President Bill Fields was interested in
speaking to former Assistant Managers about their reasons for leaving
Wal-Mart. I met with Mr. Fields and
explained what had occurred with Mr. Waters.
Mr. Fields told me that he had received other complaints from women
about Mr. Waters’ conduct towards them.
Mr. Fields assured me that Mr. Waters was no longer a Regional Vice
President and he asked me to return to my position with Wal-Mart. I agreed.
9. I was placed as an Assistant
Manager in Plainfield, Indiana in March 1995.
My daughter was born in January 1996 and my performance evaluation
ranking for the year after she was born was “exceeds expectations.”
10. In July 1997, I was promoted to the position
of Store Manager in Marysville, Kansas.
I drove with my daughter’s father, who is African-American, to find a
place to live there. When we arrived in
town, we were treated hostilely by a clerk in the local Wal-Mart store, the
town realtor and by a number of
prospective landlords because we were a mixed-race family. At the last rental we visited, the landlord
told us that my daughter was not safe and that we needed to be out of town by
dark. I knew then that I could not move
my family to this place.
11. I called the Regional
Personnel Manager Gary Coward, explained what had happened and asked to be
placed as a store manager anywhere else.
He refused and told me that I would have to go to Marysville as planned
or accept a demotion and return as an assistant manager to the 86th Store in
Indianapolis, one of the worst stores in the area. I took the demotion to assistant manager at
the 86th Street Store. This was particularly humiliating because my employees
in Plainfield had just thrown me a big going-away party to celebrate my
promotion.
12. I was placed as a co-manager
of the Greenwood, Indiana store in September 1997. The Store Manager, Curt Mace, ran the store
like a boys’ club. He regularly
socialized with a group of male managers and hourly employees – going to lunch
together, drinking, playing pool, and going to the race track. I was not invited to participate in these
activities but rather was left to run the store. Wal-Mart’s anti-fraternization
policy prohibits store management from socializing with subordinates outside of
work. To my knowledge, Mr. Mace was not
coached for his conduct.
13. In June 1998, I posted for a
store manager opening in Decatur, Indiana and was selected. The store had a lot of problems when I
arrived (i.e. 16 trailers of old merchandise in the back) but I was able, over
time, to clean it up. I put the store
through a remodel and there was a grand opening in late 1999. Attached hereto as Exhibit C are a number of
commendations that I received for the work that I did at Decatur.
14. As the Decatur store
manager, I was required to attend regular district meetings in Fort Wayne,
Indiana. I was the only female store
manager in the district. The district
manager would sometimes hold the lunch meeting at Hooter’s restaurant. The waitresses at the restaurant are required
to wear tight t-shirts to show off their breasts. During the meeting, I was forced to listen
to lots of discussion among the male managers about the waitresses’ breasts and
butts and which sexual experiences they would like to have with them. While it
was humiliating to be there, I was reluctant to complain. I knew from attending the annual company
meetings that the male managers often went out together to strip clubs after
the meeting. It seemed to me to be an
accepted part of the culture.
15. In September 1999, I was assigned as the store
manager for the new supercenter slated to open in Bluffton, Indiana. In my experience, Wal-Mart generally staffed
new stores with an experienced group of managers. Instead, I was given a team of managers that
included two co-managers who were brand new to Wal-Mart. So, in addition to hiring and training 450
new employees, I also had to train the management staff. When other new stores had in the past opened
in the Fort Wayne area, they had been staffed with experienced managers. The store managers in those new stores were
men. I felt as if I was being set up to
fail with this inexperienced management staff.
16. Specifically, district
management hired Jerome Rauch (a male) from a local grocery store chain to
serve as the co-manager in Bluffton.
Rauch had no Wal-Mart experience, management or otherwise. He was paid a guaranteed salary of $65,000
annually -- $15,000 more than I was making although he reported to me. He also received three weeks’ paid vacation
from his hire date; I had had to work seven years to accumulate that same
benefit. I am aware that another male
co-manager, Alia Naghdi, was hired off the street for $10,000 more than I was
making.
17. In March 2000, our district
manager Kevin Washburn learned he was in trouble because several stores in his
district had high shrink; the Bluffton store was not one of them, however. We (the district manager, the store managers
and the loss prevention staff) were told to drive to Bentonville to meet with
senior management about the problems.
We went in two cars, one driven by District Manager Washburn and the
other by Phil Harris, Loss Prevention District Manager. I was the only woman in my car and there was
another female store manager, Shelly Lehman, in the other. During the
approximately 16-hour drive, the male managers talked ceaselessly about sex
despite my repeated requests that they stop.
We stopped for gas and several of the male managers wanted to go for a
drink at the club adjacent to the station.
When we entered, I realized that it was a strip club. Although I had never been in a place like
this and had no interest in being there, I had no choice but to stay because I
did not have my own car. I did not
believe that it would have been safe for me to sit in the parking lot in the
dark outside the club. I tried to ignore
the show, but at one point, I was approached by one of the strippers and
District Manager Kevin Washburn proposed that he pay one of the strippers $50
to have a “threesome out back” with me.
I refused.
18. In Bentonville, our team was berated and
humiliated for the district’s bad performance. We were made to stand up in a
large group meeting and be introduced as the group “that just lost us a million
dollars.” District Manager Washburn and
another Store Manager, David Pickle, were demoted. I met privately with the Divisional President
Mike Huffaker, who told me that I was a
great store manager and that I was only there because the Decatur store (which
I had been out of for several months) was among those with high shrink.
19. On the return trip to
Indiana, we stopped at two more strip clubs, including the “Pink Cadillac”
somewhere in Missouri. The other female
manager, Shelly Lehman, and I sat in the back of the club as far away from the
stage as possible, while several of the
men sat up close and paid for lap dances. We repeatedly asked the male drivers whether
we could leave. When we returned to the
motel where we were to spend the night, District Manager Washburn and at least
one other store manager dropped us off and announced that they were going to a
massage parlor, which I understood to mean that they were planning to hire
prostitutes.
20. I returned to work at the
Bluffton store and District Manager Washburn was replaced briefly by David
Tyson, who in turn was replaced by John Waters in May 2000. As noted earlier in my declaration, I had
resigned in 1994 because of Mr. Waters’ abusive conduct towards me and I knew
that he had been demoted at that time from his Regional Manager position. I worried that he might now retaliate against
me for these earlier events. I grew more
afraid when, at our first meeting, he made a point of telling me, in a less
than friendly tone, that he “remembered” me.
21. At our next meeting, two
weeks later, my fear increased when District Manager Waters questioned how it
was that I had ever gotten a supercenter store manager position. When I responded that it was because of my
strong past performance, he told me that what he had heard that I was a
supercenter store manager because I was
“Kevin’s pet,” referring to my former District Manager Kevin Washburn.
22. While my store’s performance was on track,
Mr. Waters started to look for reasons to criticize me. For example, some of the hourly employees
complained to him that one of the female assistant managers (who I played no
role in selecting) was “too mean.” Based
on this, he told me my performance was “unacceptable” and I needed to fix the
problem or turn in my keys. Mr. Waters
called in a Wal-Mart quality assurance inspector to see if he could find a
problem in the grocery area of my store.
The inspector found nothing wrong.
23. Two weeks later, on June 16,
Mr. Waters telephoned me and asked me to step down. I demanded to meet with him in person and I
drove 30 miles to meet him. He told me
that a woman should not be running a Wal-Mart store and that I “needed to be
home raising my daughter.” He
instructed me to step down “voluntarily” and to tell my employees at the
morning meeting that having this new supercenter was too stressful for a single
parent and that I just needed to take a break.
In other words, it was not enough for Mr. Waters to just get rid of
me. I believe that he also wanted me to
send a strong signal to other women that the job was not right for any
mother. He told me to step down
voluntarily or he would have me out within four to six weeks – he would make my
life “hell.” I had no choice but to step
down.
24. At the time, the Bluffton
store – my store -- was running in the black and would have made a profit in
the first year, which is very unusual for a new store.
25. At that time that I was
forced to step down, Mr. Waters had ten stores in his district and I was the
only female manager in the district. A
male, Bruce Hovey, was assigned as the new store manager of the Bluffton store. Mr. Hovey had previously worked for Mr.
Waters and had been fired for altering payroll documents.
26. I sent a letter to the
Regional Vice President Arthur Emmanuel complaining about my demotion. In the letter, I specifically raised the
question of whether my treatment was a result of my gender. Attached hereto as Exhibit D is a true and
correct copy of the letter that I wrote.
I subsequently spoke by phone with Mr. Emmanuel and renewed my concerns
that Mr. Waters was motivated to act because I am female. Mr. Emmanuel told me that there had not been
any complaints about Mr. Waters’ treatment of women, a statement that I knew to
be false based upon my discussion with Divisional President Bill Fields in
1994.
27. I was transferred as a
co-manager in the Columbia City, Indiana store in July 2000. My new district manager, Dave Tyson, told me
that I had to be placed in a different district
- a 120 mile daily commute -- because John Waters refused to have me in
his district. He told me to work hard
and prove myself and I could again run a store.
28. Shortly thereafter, I
received a call from the Regional Personnel Manager, Shantel Jones, who
instructed me not to shop in the Bluffton Wal-Mart store. The associates there remained loyal to me and
were not receptive to the man that Mr. Waters had selected to replace me She felt that my presence in the store
undermined his ability to succeed.
29. I assumed that, once I took my demotion and
moved out of his district, District Manager Waters would leave me alone. I was wrong.
Mr. Waters accused me of violating the anti-fraternization policy – he
claimed that I had been involved with a subordinate whom I supervised. There was an investigation (ironically,
conducted by Jerome Rauch) and I was cleared of any wrongdoing.
30. I knew at that point that I
had to leave Wal-Mart. I resigned a few
weeks later.
I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of
the State of Indiana that the foregoing is true and correct. Executed this ___ day of March, 2003 at
Indianapolis, Indiana.
______________________________
Melissa
J. Howard