David Perdue
It's primary day in Georgia, and
a favorite to make the runoff election is David Perdue, the former Dollar General CEO. Republicans love their businessman candidates, Dollar General stores are a familiar sight in Georgia, and being wealthy rarely hurts a candidate. Dollar General's
discriminatory pay practices under Perdue's leadership are the sort of thing that could come back to hurt a candidate in a general election, though.
According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, female Dollar General managers "generally were paid less than similarly situated male managers performing duties requiring equal skill, effort, and responsibility," and the company paid more than $15 million in a class action suit over discrimination.
"Dollar General has set up a pay system which permits stereotypes about men and women to be used in judging their pay, performance, and salary needs," female Dollar General managers claimed in sworn statements. "This includes stereotypes about men being the breadwinner, head of the household, or just more deserving because they are men." [...]
One plaintiff, Patty Eberle, said in a sworn statement that from 2001 to 2008, the men she trained to be store managers made more than she did as both a store manager and trainer.
"Every male manager that was hired in the Springfield, Missouri area was brought in at a higher rate than I was making as store manager," another plaintiff, Ruby Sims, said in a sworn statement. "A former district manager came into my office one day right before she quit working at Dollar General and provided me with documents detailing the excessive pay men were receiving for doing the same jobs as female managers." Sims said she complained to two male superiors. "Nothing was ever done."
After failing to prevent a class-action suit, Dollar General went to mediation and ended up paying the women $15.5 million, in addition to millions more in claims administration and attorneys' fees. The case dragged on for years after Perdue's time as CEO, but the discrimination in question? That happened squarely on his watch. As did the practice of calling store clerks managers to get out of paying them overtime, which led to another lawsuit and multimillion dollar payout.
David Perdue has a proven record as a leader. That record involves discrimination and wage theft. Proven Republican-businessman practices, to be sure, but another of those things Republicans don't want voters to realize they support. The official Republican line on why they oppose the Paycheck Fairness Act, for instance, is not "I like to discriminate and don't want it made harder or more expensive," it's "I support equal pay, but discrimination is already illegal and this will lead to more lawsuits." Perdue might just have a problem selling that answer, given his record.
