Wal-Mart Eats Employees: Indigestion Follows

A California jury ordered the world's largest retailer to pay $172 million for violations of a California law that requires meal breaks for employees.

Highlights from the Los Angeles Times story:

• Michael Christian, one of the San Francisco lawyers who represented the plaintiffs: "There was an abundance of evidence that Wal-Mart knew that workers did not get meal periods for many years and they did nothing.  The jury concluded that conduct was unacceptable" and that Wal-Mart "deserved to be punished for its willful indifference to its workers."
• Wal-Mart has acknowledged that it had "compliance issues" when the statute took effect in 2001, spokeswoman Mona Williams said in a statement.
• Juror Jeff Pector, a 52-year-old software developer, said he and several other jurors believed that the punitive damage award should have been higher."Wal-Mart, in my opinion, had clear knowledge of what the law was requiring, full, timely, uninterrupted meal breaks, and from the top down to the store manager, it seemed that there was disregard for the laws that were passed in California."
• In addition to the similar wage and hour class-action suits in other states, Wal-Mart faces lawsuits accusing the retailer of discriminating against female employees and tolerating sweatshop conditions in the factories of its foreign suppliers.

This kind of message from the jury would not be possible if Team King George Bush had its way, capping class action punitive damages.

http://walmartwatch.com/