For six years, Julie Valentine-Dunn worked as a part-time grocery checker, watching men with less seniority get better hours and shifts. Then one day, she asked a supervisor for a better job and was rudely rebuffed.
"I just got out the phone book and through tears, started calling lawyers," she recalled.Her efforts paid off Thursday when lawyers announced that her former employer, Lucky Stores Inc., had agreed to pay up to $107 million to settle claims from thousands of woman who say they got stuck in low-paying jobs.
It is the nation's second-largest settlement in a sex-discrimination lawsuit.
"This is a message that goes to every grocery store, that women are just as interested throughout this country in better-paying jobs," said Brad Seligman, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
For Valentine-Dunn, a third-generation Lucky worker, it was a moment to savor. Among the 14,000 women who will share the settlement is her mother, now a checker. Her late grandfather was a Lucky janitor.
Lucky, while denying it broke civil rights laws, also agreed to change its personnel practices and goals for promoting women.
"Lucky now has the most progressive personnel policies in the supermarket industry," Roger D. Wilhelm, executive vice president and general manager of Lucky's Northern California division.
The settlement covers women who have worked at Lucky's 188 stores in Northern California in the past decade. It does not apply to the company's Southern California stores.
"This is a great day," said Diane Skillsky, a 21-year Lucky veteran who said she joined the class-action lawsuit after seeing her teenage son get training opportunities she was denied.
The award includes of $74.25 million in damages to be paid out to the women and $20 million to be spent over seven years improving personnel practices. Lucky will have to pay an additional $13 million if it doesn't comply.
Individual awards, to be paid out in 1995, will be based on seniority, with the average award totaling $5,000. Some women will get as much as $50,000.
The agreement is second only to a $240 million sex discrimination settlement won in 1992 against State Farm Insurance Cos.
Seligman's firm, Saperstein, Mayeda & Goldstein, which also handled the State Farm case, recently settled cases against the grocery stores of Albertsons, for $29.5 million, and Save Mart, for $6.5 million. It has a similar lawsuit pending against Safeway.
Valentine-Dunn, 33, of Madera, said she quit in 1987 because working conditions became intolerable. But now she wants her job back, in part because the good medical benefits would cover her four children.
But Valentine-Dunn said she was motivated by more than a better job.