As Walmart workers across the country participate in the company’s first-ever retail worker strike, one former employee’s dispute with the big box store comes to a close.
Meredith Boucher, a former Walmart assistant manager in Canada, was awarded $1.49 million after suing for mistreatment in the workplace, the Calgary Herald reported. Boucher said she was the victim of verbal abuse for six months by her store manager in Windsor, Ontario three years ago. She was awarded more than she had originally sued for, according to the Calgary Herald.
“I didn’t eat. I was losing weight. I was throwing up blood. I was sick to my stomach all the time,” Boucher told the Windsor Star.
Boucher said her manager referred to her as “a gong show” and “stupid” and said she saw the store manager commit abuses to other female employees as well, the Windsor Star reported.
A lawyer for Walmart said the court's decision was "perverse" and that they would be seeking appeal, according to the Calgary Herald.
In California, five women are suing Walmart for gender discrimination. The women take an alternate plan of action after the Supreme Court dismissed a class action lawsuit against Walmart by 1.5 million female employees -- the largest sex discrimination lawsuit in U.S. history.
Walmart has also been accused of religious discrimination. This June, the world's largest private employer agreed to pay $70,000 to a Mormon employee after the store threatened to fire him for observing the Sabbath.
Currently, employees are striking against Walmart’s attempts to "silence and retaliate against workers for speaking out for improvements on the job," according to a news release from United Food and Commercial Workers. On Tuesday, 88 workers walked out of 28 stores and now are threatening to protest on Black Friday -- one of Walmart’s biggest shopping days of the year.
About 12 percent of the 3,044 federal court lawsuits against Walmart since 2009 involved issues with employment, according to data by Bloomberg.
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