Posted on 03/18/2005 8:17:17 PM PST by Dan from Michigan
Wal-Mart Escapes Criminal Charges in Case By CHUCK BARTELS
Friday, March 18, 2005 11:05 PM EST
LITTLE ROCK - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. escaped criminal charges but agreed Friday to pay $11 million, a record fine in a civil immigration case, to end a federal probe into its use of illegal immigrants to clean floors at stores in 21 states.
A dozen contractors who actually hired the laborers for work inside stores for the world's largest retailer agreed to plead guilty to criminal immigration charges and together pay an additional $4 million in fines.
"This case breaks new ground not only because this is a record dollar amount for a civil immigration settlement, but because this settlement requires Wal-Mart to create an internal program to ensure future compliance with immigration laws by Wal-Mart contractors and by Wal-Mart itself," said Michael J. Garcia, assistant secretary for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"We plan to use this settlement as a model for future cases and efforts in worksite enforcement," he said.
Wal-Mart received a target letter from a grand jury in Pennsylvania and was the subject of an October 2003 raid spanning 21 states and 60 stores. The raids led to the arrest of 245 allegedly illegal immigrants.
Wal-Mart, which has 1.2 million domestic workers, had pledged its cooperation in the investigation.
"We are satisfied that this is being settled as a civil matter," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Mona Williams told The Associated Press from the company's Bentonville headquarters. "Despite a long, thorough and high-profile investigation, the government has not charged anyone at Wal-Mart with wrongdoing."
Federal officials said the fine money would go to the Treasury Forfeiture Fund and will be spent on "promoting future law enforcement programs and activities in this field by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement."
Williams said the government can spend the money for training and initiatives that "help make sure service companies or anyone else can't prey on undocumented workers."
"We think the money will be well spent," Williams said.
Williams, in a conference call later, made reference to Wal-Mart's "ongoing partnership with the government" and said the company is making a number of changes.
No longer does Wal-Mart employ outside contractors to clean its floors. Companies that do contract work for other chores will have stricter rules to follow to win those contracts, and upper management will have to approve contracts of more than $10,000, Williams said.
"We've put stronger internal controls in place so hopefully nothing like this would happen again," Williams said.
The probe began in 1998 and ended with the big raids on Oct. 23, 2003.
Among those arrested in the raids were eight people who worked for Wal-Mart itself. Williams said the eight had been hired from floor cleaning companies as Wal-Mart began to clean its floors with its own workers. Williams said those workers had documents that appeared to be valid and said the law prevented the company from challenging those documents.
"We were between a rock and a hard place," she said.
Williams said no executives or mid-level managers knew the contractors had hired illegal immigrants, a statement reflected in the consent decree.
Workers picked up in the October raids came from 18 different nations, including 90 from Mexico, 35 from the Czech Republic, 22 from Mongolia and 20 from Brazil, officials said. In all, two separate investigations resulted in arrests of 352 illegal immigrants contracted as janitors at Wal-Mart stores. Officials say a third of the workers have been deported to their home countries. Lawyers for some of the workers claim they worked as many as seven days a week, were not paid overtime and did not receive injury compensation.
An employer can face civil and criminal penalties for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants or failing to comply with certain employee record-keeping regulations.
Once investigators moved in, Wal-Mart told its executives to preserve documents. Federal agents didn't wait and took boxes from the office of a mid-level executive at the company's Bentonville headquarters. That executive still works for the company, Williams said.
About a year before the raids, Wal-Mart had started to bring the work in-house. The company said it had used more than 100 third-party contractors to clean more than 700 stores nationwide. At present, the company has 3,703 stores in the United States.
Wal-Mart Stores had sales last year of $288.19 billion.
States in which the raids occurred include: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Wal-Mart shares fell 88 cents to close at $51.45 in Friday trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
About damn time.
A drop in the bucket for them.
Well, I guess there can't be criminal charges if the illegals were hired via contractors. Hopefully the $11 million hurts them enough to ride their contractors.
Now let's see how many other businesses get in trouble for hiring illegals. (IMO, they all should - no matter how small!) BUT, I'll bet that only Walmart is targeted and this is the last we hear of it. The libs hate Walmart for offering us lower prices, no unions, and family values (w/r the music, etc., they don't allow in the stores).
Tooooo many lawyers looking for an early retirement.
This will all come to a screeching halt when we start throwing managers into jail for breaking the law. A girl can dream...
nope they will just up the price of snickers bars a nickle and make that 11 mil back in a week
11 mil to wally world is like $100 to bill gates
Gee, maybe he can use part of the money to pay SSA for copies of those app. 130,000 employer "no match" letters SSA sends out every year. The letters are sent to employers that have ten or more bogus SSNs submitted on their employee W-2 earning statements.
The employers are mostly agriculture, hotels and restaurants, and services such as floor cleaning companies.
But alas, there's the pesky immigrant "rights" industry and business groups to put a stop to any plans like getting the lists of the employers.
Home Depot, Walmart, ??????... Where does it all end....
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