- OAKLAND, Calif. - A California
jury on Thursday awarded $172 million to thousands of employees at Wal-Mart
Stores Inc. who claimed they were illegally denied lunch breaks.
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- The world's largest retailer was ordered to pay $57 million
in general damages and $115 million in punitive damages to about 116,000
current and former California employees for violating a 2001 state law
that requires employers to give 30-minute, unpaid lunch breaks to employees
who work at least six hours.
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- The damages were originally tallied as $207 million after
a court clerk misread the punitive damages as $150 million. The amount
of punitive damages was later clarified.
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- The class-action lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court
is one of about 40 nationwide alleging workplace violations by Wal-Mart,
and the first to go to trial. The Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer, which
earned $10 billion last year, settled a similar lawsuit in Colorado for
$50 million.
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- In the California lunch-break suit, Wal-Mart claimed
that workers did not demand penalty wages on a timely basis. Under the
law, the company must pay workers a full hour's wages for every missed
lunch.
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- The company also said it paid some employees their penalty
pay and, in 2003, most workers agreed to waive their meal periods as the
law allows.
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- The lawsuit covers former and current employees in California
from 2001 to 2005. The workers claimed they were owed more than $66 million
plus interest, and sought damages to punish the company for alleged wrongdoing.
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- Attorney Fred Furth, who brought the case on behalf of
the workers, said outside court that the jury "held Wal-Mart to account."
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- Wal-Mart attorney Neal Manne said the jury's verdict,
reached after nearly three days of deliberations and four months of testimony,
would likely be appealed.
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- He claimed the state law in question could only be enforced
by California regulators, not by workers in a courtroom. He added that
Wal-Mart did not believe the lunch law allowed for punitive damages.
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- "We absolutely disagree with their findings,"
Manne said of the jury's verdict. He conceded that Wal-Mart made mistakes
in not always allowing for lunch breaks when the 2001 law took affect,
but said the company is "100 percent" in compliance now.
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- The lawsuit was filed by several former Wal-Mart employees
in the San Francisco Bay area in 2001, but it took four years of legal
wrangling to get to trial.
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- The verdict comes as the company is waging an intense
public-relations campaign to counter critics aiming to stop the retailer's
expansion and make it boost workers' salaries and benefits.
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- Paul Blank, campaign director for WakeUpWalMart.com,
an union-affiliated advocacy group that believes Wal-Mart's policies over
wages, health benefits and other issues harm families and communities,
said he was delighted by the verdict.
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- "It is a sad day when Wal-Mart provides these so-called
low prices by exploiting their workers and even the law," Blank said.
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- The company added lower-cost health insurance this year
after an internal memo surfaced that showed 46 percent of Wal-Mart employees'
children were on Medicaid or uninsured.
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- A federal lawsuit pending in San Francisco accuses the
company of paying men more than women.
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