Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s biggest retailer, agreed to pay $54.3 million to settle a Minnesota lawsuit over wages after a judge ruled the company broke state laws by requiring employees to work off-the-clock. ...This is not an isolated case. There are over 80 active suits, including class actions, against Wal-Mart on similar issues of labor law violations.
The agreement prevents the case from being presented to a jury, which would have been asked to order Wal-Mart to pay as much as $2 billion.
The company required hourly employees to work off-the-clock during training and denied full rest or meal breaks in violation of state wage-and-hour laws, Hastings, Minnesota, District Judge Robert King Jr. ruled July 1, following a non-jury trial. King said Wal-Mart broke labor laws more than 2 million times and ordered the retailer to give employees $6.5 million in back pay. ...
As part of the settlement, Wal-Mart agreed to maintain various electronic systems to ensure it complies with Minnesota wage laws. ...
“Wal-Mart’s failure to compensate plaintiffs was willful,” King wrote in his 151-page decision in July. “Wal-Mart was on notice from numerous sources of the wage and hour violations at issue and failed to correct the problem.”
Since 2004, Wal-Mart has paid out over $520 million in back wages, damages, attorneys fees, and fines as a result of its violations of laws involving such basic rights as pay, overtime, and meal breaks against over 450,000 employees. That figure includes a 2007 settlement resulting from a investigation by the Labor Department involving illegal denial of overtime pay, in which $33 million in back pay went to some 87,000 workers.
One of the biggest cases in money terms was a $172 million verdict in California in 2005 over meal breaks. And California workers aren't finished: In April, Wal-Mart workers in the state won the reversal of a ruling barring them from pursuing a class action revolving around illegal denials of overtime pay and meal breaks resulting from Wal-Mart falsely calling them "assistant managers." That case among those still pending, as is one in Massachusetts where on September 23 the state's Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the workers can be certified as a group for the purpose of a class action.
Why do these suits keep coming up? Or, more to the point, why does Wal-Mart continue to screw its employees? Why, even after losing suits, even after having to pay out literally hundreds of millions of dollars, does the company continue to nickel and dime the workers?
Because it can. Because it's "good business" to cheat. Because it's more profitable to ignore the law and pay the settlements than it is to act lawfully and fairly. Being a corporate crook is better for the bottom line and as long as that remains true, as long as the penalties do not extend well beyond back wages (i.e., wages the company should have paid in the first place), this kind of thing will continue.
Hundreds of millions of dollars over five years? Flea bitings! Pennies! Farthings! Less than farthings! The company's sales in fiscal 2008 - that one year - were $375 billion. So that $520 million is a little over one-tenth of one percent of one year's sales.
And that's going to make Wal-Mark shake in its corporate boots? Please.
The short-term prospects for any significant toughening of the penalties for being a corporate crook are grim. But there is something that can be done right now and may, might, possibly could, have an impact: Don't shop at Wal-Mart. Or Sam's Club. If you have a membership to the latter, cancel it and make it clear why. Tell your friends what you're doing and tell them why.
That just might make a difference. And even if it doesn't, at least in the short run, refusing to pad the profits of outfits like that with your money is the right thing to do.
Footnote: Wal-Mart has another distinction. In a newly-released report, the International Labor Rights Forum lists it as one of the five worst corporations with regard to respecting labor organizing rights. (The others were Dole, Del-Monte, Nestlé, and the Russell Corporation, a subsidiary of Fruit of the Loom, Inc.)
In comments, Tim of Green Left Infoasis and Feet Meet Fire notes that the ILRF has a page where you can send a message to heads of those five companies. The link is right here.
Updated with the info about the ILRF message link.
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