In a press release distributed this morning, Wal-Mart has announced that it is “once again driving unnecessary health care costs out of the system and passing the savings along to its customers through the pharmacy aisles.”

How is it doing it this time? By offering exclusive-to-Wal-Mart diabetes management products for $9 each at all Wal-Mart pharmacies nationwide. That, might I say, is quite excellent actually. I myself don’t have - and don’t have immediate family members who have - diabetes. But I’ve known and worked with people who do, and one thing an individual with diabetes shouldn’t have to worry about is the cost of testing and treatment supplies, which I could imagine can get quite expensive.

No, the problem with this story isn’t in what Wal-Mart is announcing. It is, instead, the way in which Wal-Mart has treated its own employees who have diabetes. Helping the masses might seem a little nicer if the company treated its own diabetic employees with slightly more compassion and understanding.

The gold standard of what I’m talking about is the story of Stephen Orr. Orr worked as a pharmacist at a Nebraska Wal-Mart. Orr has Type 1 diabetes, a condition in which the body does not produce insulin, a hormone needed to convert sugar, starches and other food into the energy needed for daily life. As a result, Orr must administer insulin to himself several times each day. For a while, management allowed him to, you know, do the things he needed to do over the course of a day to stay alive...like actually take a lunch break. Eventually though, business and customer traffic forced Wal-Mart - instead of hiring an additional pharmacist - to inform Orr he could no longer take a break to eat and rest. In fact, he was told to eat behind the pharmacy counter if and when store traffic slowed. If you can’t guess what happened, I’ll tell you - Orr’s blood glucose levels dropped severely on multiple occasions, causing him to experience symptoms of hypoglycemia, which can include dizziness or lightheadedness, confusion, difficulty speaking, and feeling anxious or weak. Wal-Mart still refused to accommodate him, and his manager eventually fired him, explicitly telling him it was because of his diabetes.

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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed suit in U.S. District Court in Illinois for violating employment provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The suit was brought yesterday on behalf of Barbara Hacker, a Wal-Mart greeter who suffers from epilepsy. Click here for a copy of the complaint.

The EEOC is the federal enforcing agency for the employment provisions of the ADA, and this is NOT the Commission’s first run-in with Wal-Mart. In fact, Wal-Mart’s history with the EEOC is littered with lawsuits, settlements, and broken promises to eliminate barriers for applicants and employees with disabilities. A report by Human Rights Watch found that between 1992 (when the ADA went in to effect) and 2002, sixteen suits had been filed by the Commission against Wal-Mart for violating Title I of the ADA, the most filed against any single corporation. Several more cases have been filed since then, two of which were settled earlier this year. (For more info on these, click here and here.)

As for Barbara Hacker, she informed her supervisors when she was hired about her epilepsy. She asked for nothing more than the reasonable accommodation of being allowed to sit for a couple minutes in a quiet place while she recovered from seizures. For a time she was accommodated, but ultimately she was fired after having a seizure in a back room off the sales floor at the Rockford Wal-Mart. According to EEOC attorney Aaron Decamp:

[T]he lawsuit was filed after Hacker filed a complaint with the EEOC in late 2006, after she was fired. EEOC investigators determined the claim had merit, and attorneys tried to reach a settlement with Wal-Mart before the suit was filed.

It should be noted that being the top lawsuit target of the ADA enforcement agency is probably not a good thing. Resources do not allow the EEOC to prosecute every case, which is why the Commission uses “strategic and vigorous” litigation as an enforcement tool.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission files suit against Wal-Mart [Rockford Register Star]

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