Wal-Mart loses $187.6M worker break case

Source: Reuters

Suit against retail giant covered 187,000 current and former Penn. employees

Wal-Mart Stores Inc has lost its appeal of most of a $187.6 million verdict for Pennsylvania hourly workers who accused the world's largest retailer of denying them meal and rest breaks.

A three-judge panel of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania on Friday said there was sufficient evidence for Philadelphia jurors in 2006 to conclude that Wal-Mart's practices violated state wage and hour laws. It also said Wal-Mart's own internal review uncovered violations regarding "off-the-clock" work.

The case was brought on behalf of about 187,000 current and former Wal-Mart workers in Pennsylvania from 1998 to 2006.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43384915/ns/business-us_business/

But, of course, it's the principle of the thing.

(Wal-Mart).

I think there are other lawsuits pending too. Didn't they have a discrimination against hiring women lawsuit going? OR is that over?

make our underwear.

So speaking of Dirt Bags...there was a woman that went from Xerox (dirt bag company) to management at Delta Air Lines (she fended off a union vote) and then got on the Board of Walmart (few years ago). I don't know if she's still there but she OOOOOZZZED Anti-Union, all while smiling to your face.

...many thousands of us watched her leave with a big FAT package, moving on to keep Walmart non-union.

Dirt bags...they leave us HOLDING the bag and they leave with millions.

Did Hillary work at Delta and Xerox too?

What blows me away is the number of employees over those few years.

I cannot imagine ever going back to a WalMart (I have actually been in one on one occasion), much less having to work in one of those horrible places.

Sonoman

Maybe next time...

Sonoman

It may not be perfect, but it's a move in the right direction.

right but it is a start and all movements need a start, no matter how small.

pad the checks of their CEOs while higher prices, lower wages, and even worse working conditions will ensue for everyone else. Jerks.

a similar settlement from Taco Bell in 1998. I got about $3000 for my trouble. That $3000 changed my life. I hope these Wal Martians take this money and do something positive with it. Don't blow it all at Taco Bell. Or Wal Mart!

I NEVER do. But I have alternatives where I live. I realize there are small towns where the ONLY store is Wal-Mart. And the prices in those small towns are a lot higher than the ones Wal-Mart has where there are alternatives.

Sam's Club neither

items. I use other stores whenever possible but they often do not have what I need. Other stores with choices are 1 to 2 hours away. Life and its choices are not always simple

I avoid it at all costs, for various reasons. But I have been forced to go there a few times.

Of course, this site is goodf for some laughs:
http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/

Sadly, we would be laughing at what America has become, a bunch of obese, stupid, know nothin's.

It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic. I can't stand to go in one as you always encounter the same thing. People that are too fat to walk clogging the aisles with their scooters looking for the best price on cookies.

Maybe a scooter ban is in order!

They screwed the community I grew up in. Sucked the life out of the small business community, then packed up and left to build a bigger store 10 miles down the road.

I'm fortunate to have other shopping alternatives here in the town I live in now. But, by far, Walmart is the big store in town, next to Lowe's. I've known a few folks that has worked for Waldo Mart and they went back because they had to and it was the only place they could get a job at the time.

I hope that they can bounce back from this damaging loss!

Can't stand the place. I have never shopped there. Will do without first.

they might have to close the sock dept. in one store for at least 3 minutes.
The should rename the store: Crooks On The Loose

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!

Let me repeat

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!

I have to wear 18ct or my ears will get infected. I usually stick to hypoallergenic cheap stuff, works great, and anything like diamonds, I stick to our local jeweler. :hi:

This judgement makes me happy, I hope I see the day this store goes down.

If you don't know, a big reason a lot of their clothes and other items are so cheap is the virtual slave labor they control overseas.

poor poor wal-mart :sarcasm:

True tale of woe: Before I left North Carolina I needed a job. Any job. So I applied EVERYWHERE. The only people who called back were Walmart, so fuck it, it'll be an education.

The first thing you must know about Walmart is, although it is nominally one company, it acts as four: Walmart Stores, Sam's Club, Walmart Distribution and Sam's Club Distribution. They don't talk to each other; right after I signed an Employment Agreement with Walmart Stores the DC in Hope Mills (right next to Fayetteville) called and offered me a job. Unfortunately, once you've signed this agreement you can't move to a different job within the Walmart system for six months. Distribution, as far as wages and working conditions go, is a whole different animal than Stores: Walmart Stores starts you at minimum wage part-time status, while Distribution starts you at $14 per hour and full-time work. All the horror stories you hear about Walmart are out of the Stores divisions; Distribution treats its people much better.

Then comes orientation day. Oh god. It is eight hours long. You spend one hour learning that unions are exactly what Walmart does not need, and seven hours learning that they do. It seems to me Walmart has been sued so many times about some of the shit they pulled, they have gone completely off the deep end in the other direction to try to compensate. Now they don't make you work off the clock, they make you file time adjustment sheets if you do ANYTHING for the company when you're not clocked in. This means that if you're shopping in the store at the end of your shift and a customer asks you where the beans are, and you tell her--even if you're standing right next to them (this happens in box stores ALL THE TIME), you've got to file a time adjustment sheet. Oh, and you've also got to monitor your time the rest of the week because if you're scheduled to work 32 hours this week and you work 32.25, you're in deep shit.

Once you're out on the floor, you will find one common belief held by anyone who's worked in any other retailer: the only reason Walmart has stayed in business is by sheer mass. A couple of quick examples:

1. I worked in Dairy. We sold Yoplait yogurt for 50 cents per cup, which is about what everyone else in Fayetteville sold it for. We also sold an 8-pack of Yoplait, or actually we stocked an 8-pack because no one ever bought one--mainly because the 8-pack was priced at over $4. Who the fuck is going to pay extra for the box? No one, that's who, and I finally went to my manager: "Please send an e-mail to Bentonville asking them why the customer does not win (the customer service campaign at the time was called The Customer Must Win) by purchasing this item as it is 24 cents more expensive than buying them loose." The next day I walked into the store and they were under $4, and they were selling.

2. I worked there during Easter season. My department handled the eggs, and we were selling eggs as fast as we could put them out. You KNOW most of those eggs were going to be colored, right? So obviously any good retail associate thinks, "maybe we should cross-merchandise egg coloring kits next to the egg display to make things easier for the customer." The first thing I had to do when I brought this wild idea to a manager was explain what cross-merchandising (an example from an earlier, more pleasant time was displaying nails next to roofing shingles because you need both to do a roofing job) is, and then I found out the only way you can cross-merchandise at Walmart is if corporate headquarters expressly tells you to. They are also REAL picky about their plan-o-grams. At Home Depot if someone at corporate sends you a plan-o-gram that won't work you can redo it and get a manager to sign off; at Walmart, if your POG doesn't work for you (because, say, it calls for 20 feet of shelf space devoted to shit everyone in your area quit eating two weeks after Sherman's March to the Sea) and it's killing your numbers, the best you can hope for is to not get written up too harshly.

Walmart isn't completely evil; they've done a few good things. The only one that comes quickly to mind is their role in killing the market for recombinant bovine growth hormone; since Walmart won't buy milk from cows treated with it and Walmart is the largest milk dealer in the US, very few farmers are using it now--you'd really have to be crazy to pass on THAT market. But on the whole, it is a bad company.

BTW for extra entertainment go to Google Maps and search for "Walmart Home Office, Bentonville, AR." Then go to Street View and look at the place. This is the biggest company in the world, and their headquarters looks nothing like you'd expect for such a grand venture--in fact, it looks very much to me like a retired milk plant they bought and put cubicles in.

My husband worked there for about 5 years. When he left, he had so much back pain he was put on constant pain meds just to be able to move. They make you throw boxes until your back breaks. Once you've reached the amount of boxes they want you to throw, they up your goal on you. Over 25% of all DC employees have diagnosed back problems.

They make you work off the clock and most people do it willingly because it gives you more time to throw boxes and makes your count look good. If you refuse to work off the clock, your promotions suddenly stop. My husband won a settlement for about $500 from them because of the off the clock thing.

They give you no sick time. Oh they claim you can take sick time but if you do call in sick, they write you up (too many write ups occurrences and they fire you). Those write ups tend to hit the older workers more than the newbies (it keeps their payroll costs down)

If an accident or injury occurs on the job, and they have many, many injuries, the manager always finds it to be the fault of the employee. That way Wally World is not held responsible for all the injuries and deaths. One guy had a heart attack while driving a lift and he died. The report found it was his own fault. I guess he should have known he was going to have a heart attack.

One fellow stepped off a lift got crushed to death by another lift and it turned out to be his own fault. He left behind a wife and small child.

So, be very, very careful about taking a job at a DC, it can kill you or leave you seriously disabled.

when she has panic/asthma attacks. She gets up\ and drives to the Walmart even if it's 2am; I guess the store on the base where she works isn't open 24 hours.

One of my friends had Walmart as an account back when she sold vitamins for a pharma company, and she claims they weren't as nasty to salespeople until after Sam Walton died.

I don't shop there, but my elderly dad (who I take care of and chauffeur to doctor's appointments) pays for gas for his car only if I buy it at Sam's Club, so as long as he's paying the piper, he calls the tune. We buy our own gas elsewhere.

I just called about a job at the distribution center. Fingers crossed! Wish me luck!

The tech support job I work at pays $9 an hour. Walmart pays $15. Not really much of a contest. It's my chance to make more money to support my wife and 2 kids. It's even more than I was getting at Dell, and I worked there for 12 years. I don't like eating ramen. Tired of it. My kids deserve better. I deserve better. Plus with the employee discount I'll get 10% off on diapers, wipes, shampoo, ect. Just not food. I guess the profit margin isn't very high on that.

If you do get the job, hopefully, you will not lose perspective on poverty and how people struggle, even those who are currently working (such as minimum wage jobs, temp gigs, etc.). :)

Walmart is horrible to its workers.

Wal-Mart Loses Appeal of $187 Million Verdict in Worker Lawsuit
Monday, 13 Jun 2011 02:56 PM

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, lost its appeal of a $187.6 million verdict in a case accusing the company of denying Pennsylvania workers rest and meal breaks.

A three-member appeals court panel ruled June 10 that there was “sufficient evidence” in the record to conclude Wal-Mart violated state wage laws for contractual rest breaks. The court ruled that the trial court must recalculate more than $45 million in attorneys’ fees in the case.

“Wal-Mart’s own internal audits revealed violations of company policies regarding missed breaks and work off-the-clock,” the panel said in a 211-page opinion.

http://www.daylife.com/quote/0b3J7ugaMx9wa?q=Wal-Mart