Pennsylvania jury fines Wal-Mart $78 million
SuzannePjam
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Pennsylvania jury fines Wal-Mart $78 million
Largest retailer found to have forced employees to work during breaks
Updated: 5:06 p.m. ET Oct 13, 2006
PHILADELPHIA - A Pennsylvania jury said on Friday that Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, must pay $78.47 million in damages to current and former Pennsylvania employees for forcing them to work “off the clock” or during rest breaks.
On Thursday, a state jury in Philadelphia found in favor of Michelle Braun and Dolores Hummel, formerly employed by Wal- Mart, saying the company violated Pennsylvania labor laws by failing to pay employees for the work.
After deliberating for about two hours, the jury found in Wal-Mart’s favor on the charge it denied workers meal breaks.
It awarded about $2.5 million for off-the-clock working and about $76 million for lost rest breaks between March of 1998 and May of 2006.
The award was another blow to Wal-Mart’s image, which has been tarnished by accusations by labor unions, politicians and others that it pays poverty-level wages and mistreats workers.
Wal-Mart, which has been working aggressively to improve its reputation, has said it is unfairly targeted because it is such a large employer.
Hummel said tearfully that she was very happy with the jury’s award.
“It took a lot of courage for me to go against Wal-Mart,” said Hummel, who worked for the company for 10 years and left in 2002.
Mike Donovan, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the jury’s verdict was “a home run.”
“They awarded everything we asked for,” he said.
“The message of today’s verdict to large retailers is that they can’t say one thing to their employees and do another.”
Neal Manne, an attorney for Wal-Mart, said he “obviously disagrees” with the jury’s verdict and its award of damages.
“I’m confident there will be an appeal,” he said, but declined to specify the grounds of any appeal.
Before deliberations began in Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas, Donovan argued that Wal-Mart employees were forced to work through their breaks because the company wanted to maximize profits.
“Wal-Mart doesn’t understand anything but numbers,” he said. “In order for Wal-Mart to understand this, it needs to see numbers, big numbers.”
At one point, Donovan urged the jury to “send a message to corporate America,” by fully compensating plaintiffs for their lost wages, but he was immediately rebuked by Judge Mark Bernstein who instructed the jury to ignore Donovan’s statement.
Manne, who asked the jury to award $287,000 for off-the- clock working and $6.65 million for missed rest breaks, argued that many employees had in fact taken breaks without swiping their ID cards to indicate they were on a break.
“Lots of people who took rest breaks simply didn’t swipe,” he said.
Manne also urged jurors to consider that some employees may have missed parts of their breaks because they wanted to keep working.
In December, a California jury ruled that Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, should pay $172 million in damages and compensation to about 116,000 current and former employees for denying meal breaks.
Plaintiffs in the 2001 California lawsuit claimed Wal-Mart had failed to pay hourly employees for missed or interrupted meal breaks. Wal-Mart has said it took steps to ensure meal breaks for its employees, including deploying technology to shut down cash registers if cashiers do not respond to alerts for breaks.
Wal-Mart shares closed up 14 cents at $48.46 on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday
Largest retailer found to have forced employees to work during breaks
Updated: 5:06 p.m. ET Oct 13, 2006
PHILADELPHIA - A Pennsylvania jury said on Friday that Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, must pay $78.47 million in damages to current and former Pennsylvania employees for forcing them to work “off the clock” or during rest breaks.
On Thursday, a state jury in Philadelphia found in favor of Michelle Braun and Dolores Hummel, formerly employed by Wal- Mart, saying the company violated Pennsylvania labor laws by failing to pay employees for the work.
After deliberating for about two hours, the jury found in Wal-Mart’s favor on the charge it denied workers meal breaks.
It awarded about $2.5 million for off-the-clock working and about $76 million for lost rest breaks between March of 1998 and May of 2006.
The award was another blow to Wal-Mart’s image, which has been tarnished by accusations by labor unions, politicians and others that it pays poverty-level wages and mistreats workers.
Wal-Mart, which has been working aggressively to improve its reputation, has said it is unfairly targeted because it is such a large employer.
Hummel said tearfully that she was very happy with the jury’s award.
“It took a lot of courage for me to go against Wal-Mart,” said Hummel, who worked for the company for 10 years and left in 2002.
Mike Donovan, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the jury’s verdict was “a home run.”
“They awarded everything we asked for,” he said.
“The message of today’s verdict to large retailers is that they can’t say one thing to their employees and do another.”
Neal Manne, an attorney for Wal-Mart, said he “obviously disagrees” with the jury’s verdict and its award of damages.
“I’m confident there will be an appeal,” he said, but declined to specify the grounds of any appeal.
Before deliberations began in Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas, Donovan argued that Wal-Mart employees were forced to work through their breaks because the company wanted to maximize profits.
“Wal-Mart doesn’t understand anything but numbers,” he said. “In order for Wal-Mart to understand this, it needs to see numbers, big numbers.”
At one point, Donovan urged the jury to “send a message to corporate America,” by fully compensating plaintiffs for their lost wages, but he was immediately rebuked by Judge Mark Bernstein who instructed the jury to ignore Donovan’s statement.
Manne, who asked the jury to award $287,000 for off-the- clock working and $6.65 million for missed rest breaks, argued that many employees had in fact taken breaks without swiping their ID cards to indicate they were on a break.
“Lots of people who took rest breaks simply didn’t swipe,” he said.
Manne also urged jurors to consider that some employees may have missed parts of their breaks because they wanted to keep working.
In December, a California jury ruled that Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, should pay $172 million in damages and compensation to about 116,000 current and former employees for denying meal breaks.
Plaintiffs in the 2001 California lawsuit claimed Wal-Mart had failed to pay hourly employees for missed or interrupted meal breaks. Wal-Mart has said it took steps to ensure meal breaks for its employees, including deploying technology to shut down cash registers if cashiers do not respond to alerts for breaks.
Wal-Mart shares closed up 14 cents at $48.46 on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday
"Where there is sacrifice there is someone collecting the sacrificial offerings."-- Ayn Rand
"Some of my friends sit around every evening and they worry about the times ahead,
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference and the promise of an early bed..."-- Elvis Costello
"Some of my friends sit around every evening and they worry about the times ahead,
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference and the promise of an early bed..."-- Elvis Costello
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in the abusive and slave-driving corporation known as UPS, there is such a phenomenon known as part-time salary, which is reserved for the part-time supervisors.
UPS operates on crazy half shifts which occur during the morning and the night. In the morning the brown trucks are filled with the boxes that are to be delivered. In the evening, boxes that are being sent out are loaded into trailers ready for cross-country truckin;.
Of course, there are the drivers who are out all day delivering packages, but they are doing their own thing away from the facility. They need minimal supervision.
So, at the facility itself, you have about 5-6 hours of heavy activity in the morning and at night. That's where the need for part-time supervisors comes in. There needs to be people standing around and making sure the boxes are being loaded and unloaded properly.
So, anyhow, these part-time supervisors are on salary. They're also not allowed to physically move the boxes with their own hands. The unionized laborers are supposed to do it. The union gets really pissed off when supervisors touch the boxes because it takes away hours that the laborers could be working if the supervisors weren't doing the work for them.
But, the problem with that is that there's never enough help when you need it. UPS loading and unloading docks are always understaffed. The supervisor always has to get in there and do some work with his own hands. UPS knows this and does nothing about it.
So, I was always getting harassed by the union. I mean I was always getting harassed. They were fucking with me left and right. UPS supervisors undergo training to deal with union harassment. That training is basically just stand there and deal with it because the union is way too powerful to fuck with.
In California, the law states that no company can pay a part-time salary less than $2150/mo. We were getting paid $1465/mo. So, I quit. A year after I quit, the lawsuit happened.
Aside from the expectation that supervisors violate union doctrine, and aside from the illegal salary, the lawsuit also cited the expection that p/t sups work through their breaks. I never actually had to work through my breaks. My boss was usually in a different city, so I had discretion over my use of time as long as the work got done before the end of the night.
That was around 2002 or so. end of story. thanks for reading.
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=272825
I would support that...if Walmart could prove it, then yes...or they could simply fire them...
I'd really love to see the public's reaction if Wal-Mart started docking people's pay for socializing on the job or making mistakes.
Sure. And these people could also simply quit.
I'd like to see that, too
well, the law is the law, and if walmart followed the law, they would not have been fined...I agree, if somebody is not happy at work because there job sucks, they can just quit, but it doesn't make it ok for Walmart to break the law...
Completely agree. I'm not saying Wal-Mart doesn't deserved to be punished for this. They do. They deserve to be punished, however, by their employees and customers, not thug lawyers.
yup, I agree. Sadly, the only one who really "wins" here are the lawyers...
why do you think im in law school?
the customers don't care and the employees are powerless. the law is set up specifically so that it will be enforced in the court of law. you're advocating vigilante justice. if the only possible recourse for employees when faced with an employer is to quit, what incentive would any business ever have to obey the law? zero. it could break the law, fire employees who make trouble, hire people they can take advantage of, and the public would never hear about it. the purpose of the law is specifically to prevent people from doing this sort of thing... to protect the weaker from abuse and exploitation by the stronger. it's like saying that murderers should not be punished by prosecutors, they should be punished by their victims' families. that's insane.
I agree, at least on the majority of them.
So these WalMart stores can run themselves?
Your reasoning is flawed. Using that logic, I could ask this question:
"What incentive would any business ever have to hire employees? Zero."
The purpose of the law is to prevent the violation of rights for any individual, regardless of stength. Not a single non-invented right is violated in this case.
Obviously, Wal-Mart needs employees to stock the shelves, run the cash register, etc. Wal-Mart pays these people like shit, and won't give them enough hours to be full-time so that they don't get any benefits either. (Wal-Mart is clever enough, though, to tell its employees how to apply for Medicaid -- so we taxpayers are financing the medical "benefits" of Wal-Mart employees.) And Wal-Mart, in its infinite wisdom, won't let employees unionize, so employees have ABSOLUTELY NO JOB SECURITY. If they're slacking off on their jobs, then Wal-Mart can -- and does, believe me -- fire them.
While our labor laws basically prevent unions from being able to organize, we do have wage and hour laws that force employers to pay overtime when employees work more than 8 hours a day. Translated into your language -- those laws give individual employees "rights" to an 8 hour work day and overtime when they exceed those hours. Wal-Mart violated those laws, those individual rights. And now they have to pay.
Oh, and those evil, thug lawyers? If these plaintiffs had lost in court, those "thugs" wouldn't have gotten anything. So they would have worked on this case for years and earned nothing. They're getting a fee because they took all the risk. The lawyers who represented these employees? They were sticking up for workers, for the little guy against corporate greed. Our politicians won't do it -- all we have left anymore are the lawyers.
doesn't feel that way right now. That's the hopeful
idea . . . Hope didn't get much applause . . .
Hope! Hope is the underdog!"
-- EV, Live at the Showbox
Well said.
Admin
Social awareness does not equal political activism!
5/23/2011- An utter embarrassment... ticketing failures too many to list.
I don't care what people feel about WalMart.
This is exactly true, except you forgot to mention our stupidity in supplying Medicaid in the first place.
First, WalMart has no obligation to let employees unionize. It's their company. If WalMart workers would like to unionize, their first act of solidarity should be to quit and form a competitor to WalMart. They have every right to do so.
WalMart certainly fires workers for slacking off, I'm sure. Again, they have that right just like the employee has the right to quit if he or she doesn't like WalMart.
That's funny. Do you understand what a "right" is? If you have a right to something, it cannot be granted, it can only be violated. Whenever you declare that you have a "right" to something, ask yourself if that "right" is only made possible by someone else's effort. You proclaim that you have a "right to an 8 hour work day"...which you do via the natural right to freedom. No one can force you to work more than 8 hours a day. WalMart employees in this case were not forced. They were completely free to walk out on their jobs. But that's not good enough for you because enclosed in your "right to an 8 hour work day" is actually a false right: the right of someone else to shoulder the costs of your free action (WalMart in this case). You need to restate your right as:
"I have a right to an 8 hour work day along with the right to keep my job at the cost of my employer, even if that employer needs me to work more than 8 hours"
You'd never do that though, because doing so forces you to create a contradiction. If you're free to force WalMart via your guns to shoulder the costs of your free choice, what prevents WalMart from forcing you to do the same?
Sometimes, yes.
Yep.
It is all you have left. Your lawyers, however, aren't any different than your politicians. They represent both halves of a new regime of force. Your politicans traded principles for guns a long time ago. The lawyers are just their foot soldiers.
Laws are on the books to protect people from situations where there are mistreated and misused, whether this is in the workplace or society. I see nothing wrong with Walmart having to pay out this judgement. Apparently, there was enough evidence that they broke the law.
Admin
Social awareness does not equal political activism!
5/23/2011- An utter embarrassment... ticketing failures too many to list.
1) Nobody forces anyone to take a job at Walmart.
2) If Wlamart is violating laws by forcing employees to work through mandadted breaks, they should pay.
3) If a worker is slacking off enough to the point that Wal-mart wants to fire them...they most certainly should be able to do that.
4) Wal-mart has no obligation to encourage and allow their workers to unionize.
5) No one is entitled to job security. It's unfortunate, but it's the facts.
But before I go, I'll say that there is no such thing as a "natural right" or a "false right" or a "true right." A right is something that we as a society get together and acknowledge as a right. Southerners had a "right" to own slaves before the Civil War; then they US passed the 13th Amendment giving former slaves the "right" to be free. Rights come and go.
You can live in Natural-Rights-Endowed-By-God-or-Whoever-La-La-Land. I live here in reality where Wal-Mart has all the money and the power to hire and fire, and the poor people who work there get the shaft.
Oh, and you just hold on waiting for that Objectivist Nirvana. Sure, we'll have to get the corporations of the government tit first, but it's right around the corner.
doesn't feel that way right now. That's the hopeful
idea . . . Hope didn't get much applause . . .
Hope! Hope is the underdog!"
-- EV, Live at the Showbox
Ah...the logic of a bank robber! Of course you would take the latter. But it certainly does beg the question:
How little do you think of yourself that you'd want to continue working for a slavedriver?
Theoretically, yes. But, unfortunately, you forgot that you've been eroding the very thing that once protected the law from creating situations where people are mistreated and misused: the Constitution.
Ok, I see nothing wrong with WalMart having to pay out this judgment either. And when the tables are turned and WalMart uses the law to force you to work for them, I'll see nothing wrong with that either.
So, you're doing a good job, working hard; you've been an asset to your company for 20 years; you've helped make them the profitable operation that they are. But you're pension expense is getting too big, so they fire you.
That's okay with you?
Honestly, employment is a two-way street. You're working for them, making them money. Don't they owe you anything in return?
doesn't feel that way right now. That's the hopeful
idea . . . Hope didn't get much applause . . .
Hope! Hope is the underdog!"
-- EV, Live at the Showbox
I have lots of empathy. You mean sympathy.
So, in other words, if I can get my neighbors to agree that I have the right to enslave you, there's absolutely no reasonable basis for you to protest? I can just say "rights come and go" as I shackle you?
I live in North Carolina.
I more than support cutting off corporations from any benefits derived from the force of governments.
Sure they owe you...but they paid it already. They have no guarantee that you will be there tomorrow...so unfortunately, it is a 2-way street.
Certainly, the better companies do better by their employees and use it as an edge to hire better employees.
I never said I would continue to work for them. But I'm sure as hell not just going to quit and run away.
I haven't been eroding anything.. the Constitution was meant to change and evolve not be a static document.. hence AMENDMENTS
How could Walmart possibly force me to work for them?? That just makes no sense. It's my choice to not work at all if I felt the need.
Admin
Social awareness does not equal political activism!
5/23/2011- An utter embarrassment... ticketing failures too many to list.
Just as okay as you quitting because you don't like your boss.
No. They owe you whatever obligation you held them to when they hired you. Nothing more.
Do you people not understand that you're attacking your own rights of free choice????? The instant you can force an employer to keep you is the instant that employer can force you to stay!
You're right: you'll only run until you find people with guns.
You've eroded a static document into a dynamic ones: hence "DERIVED RIGHTS" which means no rights.
You cannot amend the constitution to create a contradiction. An amendment must extend the document, not disown it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery
Do you understand where that choice comes from?
No, actually, I have a right in the US Constitution -- the 13th Amendment. Oh, and I also have a long tradition of common law that allows me to find a lawyer to sue your ass off for false imprisonment if you shackle me.
And you and your screwed up neighbors are free to try to amend the Constitution to repeal the 13th Amendment. But fortunately, we have a consensus here in Reality that slavery is a bad thing. So, while you have every "right" to try to change our laws, I don't think you and your scary neighbors will have much luck.
You Objectivists don't like law much, do you?
doesn't feel that way right now. That's the hopeful
idea . . . Hope didn't get much applause . . .
Hope! Hope is the underdog!"
-- EV, Live at the Showbox
If you meant empathy, then your statement was incorrect. I have lots of empathy for both WalMart employees and WalMart executives.
If you meant sympathy, you would have been right. I am not sympathetic.
"Rights come and go", right? So who's to say what's a right and what's not? I mean, your thirteenth amendment prohibits involuntary servitude. Interestingly, each employee here voluntarily worked these hours. They chose to do so. However, the fines you're extracting are potentially involuntary. So who's the slavedriver here?
Great. I have an even longer tradition of slavery. And since no one has any rights anymore, I'll just shoot your lawyer.
If all you have to prevent slavery is a "consensus", good luck with that.
I like laws as much as I like money. But a law without backing is the same as money without backing: worthless. And a law backed only by guns is no different than money backed only by guns: evil.
Have no idea what you're trying to elude to here
derive- sorry but derive doesn't negate anything, may redistibute and refine but not negate.
http://www.dictionary.net/derived
as mentioned before outlawed
yeah from that document we call the constitution. Apparently you have a problem with the way things are being done in this country and now are trying to use it to interject what you feel would be the worse case scenario.
Admin
Social awareness does not equal political activism!
5/23/2011- An utter embarrassment... ticketing failures too many to list.
Do you not understand that the system you're advocating is this:
1. Unequal rights
2. Ever-changing rights
3. Rule of whims
4. Enforcement with guns
That's it. That's the world you want, even if you don't understand you want it.
What you're saying is that you should be able to quit ("I have the right to choose my job") but that no one has the right to fire you ("You have no right to choose your employees"). And when someone attempts to do the latter, you respond not by quitting but by calling on the most heavily armed sector of our society (the government) to demand repirations or to deliver violence.
If rights are only defined by a "consensus", they are derived from nothing more than the will of the majority. So if the majority wants a right that differs from the existing constitutional rights, a contradiction is created. Only one can be true.
Phew...God knows once you "outlaw" something it can never return.
No. "It's my choice to not work at all if I felt the need" comes not from the Constitution but from your natural right of choice. The Constitution did not invent your right to choose your work.