Posted on 09/19/2005 6:15:38 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
OAKLAND, Calif. - Lawyers representing about 116,000 former and current Wal-Mart Stores Inc. employees in California told a jury Monday that the world's largest retailer systematically and illegally denied workers lunch breaks.
The suit in Alameda County Superior Court is among about 40 cases nationwide alleging workplace violations against Wal-Mart, and the first to go to trial. Wal-Mart, which earned $10 billion last year, settled a lawsuit in Colorado for $50 million that contains similar allegations to California's class action. The company also is accused of paying men more than women in a federal lawsuit pending in San Francisco federal court.
The workers in the class-action suit are owed more than $66 million plus interest, attorney Fred Furth told the 12 jurors and four alternates.
"I will prove the reason they did this was for the God Almighty dollar," Furth said in his opening statement.
Nine jurors must side with the plaintiffs to prevail. Millions of dollars also are sought to punish the company for the alleged wrongdoing.
The case concerns a 2001 state law, which is among the nation's most worker friendly. Employees who work at least six hours must have a 30-minute, unpaid lunch break. If they do not get that, the law requires they are paid for an additional hour of pay.
The lawsuit covers former and current employees in California from 2001 to 2005.
Wal-Mart declined to give an opening statement, reserving its right to give one later. Its lawyers also declined comment.
In court documents, the Bentonville, Ark., company claims that workers did not demand penalty wages on a timely basis. Wal-Mart adds that it did pay some employees their penalty pay and, in 2003, most workers agreed to waive their meal periods as the law allows.
The Bentonville, Ark.-based company also says some violations were minor, such as demanding employees punch back in from lunch and work during their meal breaks. In essence, workers were provided a shorter meal period than the law allows.
The case does not claim that employees were forced to work off the clock during their lunch breaks.
The lawsuit was brought in 2001 by a handful of San Francisco-area former Wal-Mart employees, and took four years of legal wrangling to get to trial. During that time, Wal-Mart produced internal audits that plaintiffs' lawyers maintain showed the company knew it was not granting meal breaks on thousands of occasions.
That 2000 audit was given to top-level executives, according to evidence submitted to jurors Monday.
One company document called results of the audit "a chronic problem." A one-week review of company policies showed thousands of instances in which workers were not given a meal break in accordance with the law, according to the documents provided to the jury.
"This is Wal-Mart auditing Wal-Mart," Furth said.
On Tuesday, as many as three plaintiffs are expected to testify in a trial that will last weeks.
Several lawyers representing out-of-state Wal-Mart workers in class action lawsuits were in the gallery. Karin Kramer, a lawyer suing Wal-Mart on behalf of 50,000 Washington state company workers, said suing Wal-Mart is a gargantuan task.
"They can afford and do fight you on every single issue," she said.
Shares of Wal-Mart rose 14 cents to close at $44.01 Monday on the New York Stock Exchange.
Griping about lunch breaks is a sign of desperation.
Lots of people work through lunch, and eat on the fly.
I smell the AFL-CIO in this.
Its intresting, Wal Mart has done EVERYTHING that Wall Street has asked it to do in terms of emplyee costs, taking extreme measures, and you know what, Wal Marts stock is still in the toilet, whatever they are doing, it is not working, and the low employee morale I see is very clerly reflected in the Wal Marts I go to, and that is reflected in the poor conditions I see various displays and upkeep in.
They hired a new guy from Target,he is going to change the stores. Make them more appitizing.
What's a lunch break?
Wal-Mart impregnated my sister.
I'll never shop there again.
Unless employee morale imporves, the stores will not imporve. The same exact thing happened to K Mart in the 80s and 90s, and its reputation for poor service damaged its bottom line. People are willing to spend 10%-15% extra on items, in some cases even more than that to avoid bad customer service, a dirty atmosphere and long waits at the register.
A lunch break is a 30 minuite period of time an employer is requried to give their employees. I know some disagree with such notions, but the law is the law.
I haven't had a lunch break at work in 15 years.
I wonder how they got them all into the office...
I do not believe you really meant what you posted. I cannot believe someone, who has very good benefits and very good pay compared to the average employee at WalMart, would claim the WalMart employees have it pretty good. You are the one who has it pretty good, on the taxpayers dime, too! Come on now, get real.
66 million dollars divided by 166 thousand employees equals: 397.59 per employee
Of course I'm forgetting the Attorney's fees which should come to one third of the settlement (22 million)
So, revised:
22 million for the lawyers and 265.06 for each individual employee.
So, 22 million for the lawyers and 379.31 for each employee.
Wally world is out there in the gulf states helping the victims with everything they could possibly want. This is anti corp. liberal crap as ususal.
Do you teach? Have you tried? Have you tried getting your licsense? Do you work with people? Then you do not know. Besides, I make my world, I, "Do not have it pretty good" as you put it. Everything I have, every dime I invest, every minute, every degree and diploma and every step I make are sacrifice decided upon by me. Cry me a river if you do not understand. My strength does not lie in any one area or any one dimension of minor issues. If I had a job elsewhere I would be the best and would not complain. Because I would be doing what I wanted, always.
It SOUNDS like it is squarely based upon the law. If so, then it doesn't matter whether it's Wal Mart or Joe's Submarine Sandwich Shop.
I work at Wal-Mart and recently they fired a guy at my store that would clock back in from lunch then would spend an additional 2 hours or so in the break room not working. He got away with this for a short time but was caught.
We have to take a mandatory lunch break according to the 6 hour rule mentioned in the story. I really don;t know where this stuff comes from.
Task assignment. You have got to be kidding. Give a person nine hours work and tell them it must be done in six.
You say they must give up their lunch or stay over. Do they get paid for either or do we just let the communist chinese's best friend work their employees without pay.
I pack him PB&J that he eats between calls.
These workers are whiners.
I know how that works... I'm a field service engineer for a computer company, and when I eat lunch, it's usually while I'm driving to a client site. Most days, I just don't have time for lunch.
Mark
If you could read I think you would see that the comment was about the number of hours worked, not wages, or benefits.
Teachers do put in very long hours on many days. Much of their work is done at home preparing for the next day's lessons and grading papers.
It seems to be an article of faith on FR that teachers are all lazy bums. Such a belief is as valid as saying that all who post on FR know what they are talking about.
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