Posted on 01/03/2007 6:20:39 PM PST by traumer
Wal-Mart Employees Ask Judge for Another $72 Million in Damages, Interest in Break-Time Case
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Wal-Mart workers in Pennsylvania who won a $78.5 million judgment for working off the clock and through rest breaks returned to court Wednesday to seek another $72 million in damages and interest.
They argue that about 125,000 plaintiffs in the class-action suit deserve an additional $500 each in damages, or $62 million, under Pennsylvania labor laws because the jury found that the world's largest retailer acted in bad faith. These so-called liquidated damages are designed to compensate people for the delay in payment.
The remaining 61,000 plaintiffs -- who do not qualify for those damages because of legal time limits -- should share in $10 million in interest on the back pay, lawyer Michael Donovan argued.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which denies wrongdoing and is appealing the jury award, opposed the added damages and interest. Company attorneys said that Donovan merely estimated the number of potential plaintiffs, and has not proven that each was shortchanged.
"They don't even know who they are," Wal-Mart lawyer Brian Flaherty said.
The workers already are expected to receive anywhere from about $50 to a few thousand dollars each from the initial award, depending on how long they worked for the company.
Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Mark Bernstein did not immediately rule on the issues argued Wednesday. He questioned why Donovan sought liquidated damages of $500 per worker when the statute could be interpreted to allow $500 in damages each time a worker was shortchanged.
"If I'm a claimant, I'm entitled to everything the law says I'm entitled to, and if that's $500 every time I was shorted and I was shorted 24 times a year, then it's $12,000," Bernstein said.
Donovan said he did not interpret the state wage law that way. He added that Wal-Mart's lack of record-keeping would make it impossible to determine the number of individual violations.
Bernstein oversaw the five-week trial, which culminated in October when the jury rejected Wal-Mart's claim that some employees voluntarily chose to work through breaks and that the off-the-clock work was minimal.
The suit covers current and former employees who worked at Wal-Mart and Sam's Clubs in Pennsylvania from March 1998 through May 2006.
Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark., earned $11.2 billion in profits on $312.4 billion in sales in the last fiscal year. Donovan argued at trial that the unpaid work gave Wal-Mart an unfair advantage in the marketplace.
Lead plaintiff Dolores Hummel said she put in about 10 hours each month off the clock to keep up with demands at a Sam's Club in Reading, where the single mother worked for 10 years to support her son. Sam's Clubs are a division of Wal-Mart.
Donovan has also petitioned the court for more than $40 million in legal fees, plus $5.5 million in expenses. Wal-Mart, which must pay the fees unless the verdict is overturned, objected to the request and asked for more details.
Wal-Mart is appealing a $172 million verdict in a similar California case and settled a Colorado suit over unpaid wages for $50 million.
Wal-Mart policy in Pennsylvania gives hourly employees one paid 15-minute break during a shift of at least three hours and two such breaks, plus an unpaid 30-minute meal break, on a shift of at least six hours.
I agree.
Workers wish to offer labor in exchange for money.
Employers wish to offer money in exchange for labor.
Only those whose sight has been blurred by visions of class warfare will see employers and workers as opponents.
To be sure, workers would like to be paid as much as possible for their labor, while employers would like to pay as little as possible, but neither side has fiat power over wages.
Who prevents workers from demanding and receiving higher wages? Other workers or would-be workers.
Who precents employers from cutting wages while retaining workers? Other employers or would-be employers
The function of unions isn't to improve workers' competitive advantage against employers, because they're not competing against employers. Rather, the function of unions is to offer workers a competitive advantage over other workers and would-be workers.
It's amazing to me how often the parties on either side of a trade are treated as opponents, with policies supposedly designed to favor one or the other, when the real effect of such policies is to give or nullify competitive advantages between different parties on the same side of the trade.
The sides are not symmetrical as labor is very different from money. Labor existed BEFORE money, labor is real, money is a symbol.
Few things are perfectly symmetrical, but there are more fundamental conflicts between different workers or would-be workers competing for the same job than there are between any of those workers and the would-be employer.
Note how odd this talk sounds -- because nobody has talked about a new type of union since they began.
Ditto that! I'm a network admin at a hospital and on salary. It's not uncommon for me to work 55 or 60+ hours a week and I always get the same amount on payday. I don't complain because I love doing it. To me it isn't work. I just do what I love to do and I happen to get paid for it as an added bonus. Actually, I'm working right now from home hehe.
Yeah, I'm not complaining really about OT... but if that lady thinks 10 hours a month is a lot she's in for a rude awakening if he ever goes on salary. Now, if she worked and wasn't paid, THAT she should complain about. But 10 hours a month OT..? There have been times when I worked 10 hours a DAY overtime. Gotta love the tech industry...
:-D
That particular CEO may not have been very good at his job, but he had the philosopy right. GM forgot it was in the car-making business and thought it was in the job-providing and health-insurance business. We all know how that worked out.
However, you are correct in that the other extreme doesn't work well for long, either. Disregarding the needs of your workforce is bad business practice, just as disregarding the repair schedule of your machinery is bad business practice, or disregarding the need to advertise your product effectively is bad business practice, etc. All of these are imputs to the eventual output, which for any business is profit. A smart CEO knows he needs to provide competitive wages and benefits to his workforce in order to produce a profit, so the system balances out in the long run.
You are correct that unions are on the decline, and good riddance. Outside of certain geographic areas and for certain groups of workers, they are, thankfully, no longer a factor.
It is not in the interests of the workers to care about the CEO per se, but it is in the best interests of the workers to care about the profitability of the company if they want to keep their jobs.
It is also in the best interest of the CEO to provide competitive wages and benefits for his workforce, so he can keep his skilled workers and produce a profit. Pay the workers too much, go out of business. Don't pay the workers enough, go out of business. The beauty of capitalism is that everyone, by serving their own interests, serves each others' interests as well.
Virtually anybody in this country has the opportunity to become wealthy. Becoming wealthy is more a matter of engaging in a certain set of behaviors than anything else. Get an education and job skills, get a job, get married and then have children and you have a very small chance of being poor in this country. Put a percentage of your earnings aside regularly and invest the money and you have a very great chance of being wealthy.
The only exception to these rules is the very small number of profoundly mentally or physically handicapped people who are unable to hold a job. But those numbers are very few. The vast majority of poor in this country are welfare mothers who crank out kids without fathers to provide for them. Married couples with children are rarely poor.
You speak as if the economic pie were a zero-sum gain--that if some people are rich others will necessarily have to be poor. Perhaps that is true in Poland, but it most emphatically not true here. There is abundant economic opportunity for anyone willing to gain skills and work hard.
Want the golden parachute? Study the CEOs who get them and do what they do. In this country you have a chance to get your own parachute someday or at least live a very nice lifestyle. Sitting around being jealous of those who've already achieved is pointless.
Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in 1975 and Jackie Presser died in 1988, that is hardly "now".
Much the same way any employer can afford to pay good wages and provide benefits for all employees.
Any employer who can't pay market wages will soon be out of business. Indeed, four out of five businesses fail within the first five years of opening.
The agreement that an employer and employee make as to wages and benefits is their business and no one else's. Employers who pay fair wages and benefits will always have employees willing to work for them. Employees who have job skills and are willing to work hard will always find a job at a decent level of pay.
Ain't capitalism grand?
Oh...I must've missed a meeting. When did the unions clean up?
Never have, never will.
By "the unions", do you mean all unions? If so, just about the time all business cleaned up.
I agree, monopolies are not good for anybody with the exception a few people.
Unfortunately, corruption is not confined to unions. It seems to be a human affliction, and as such, can be found in any human endeavor - even at high levels within the church.
The difference is that no one suggests we do away with churches because some leaders and members are corrupt, or that we do away with corporations because some are corrupt. We tell eachother the abuse is the exception and that the intuitions, themselves, are basically sound - why not with unions?
IMHO, more than any single issue, the last election was about people deciding that monopoly of the House, the Senate, and the Whitehouse by one party was a bad idea and that our interests are better, if imperfectly, served when a variety of interests are represented and no one person, party, organization, institution, or economic interest has a monopoly.
All in all, however, after reading all your posts to me, I believe we are close to agreement on the major issues.
Amen. It's too bad Lefties aren't as vehement about destroying terrorism as they are about annihilating Wal-Mart.
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