[Vision2020] Jury Awards $172 Million To Over 100, 000 Current And Former Wal-Mart Workers

[TIM RIGSBY]

>From the AP

An Alameda County jury today awarded $172 million to thousands of employees 
at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. who claimed they were illegally denied lunch breaks.
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.

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.

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.

In the California suit, Wal-Mart had 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.

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.

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.

The lawsuit was initially filed by a handful of former Wal-Mart employees in 
the San Francisco Bay area in 2001, but it took four years of legal 
wrangling to get to trial.



Revolution is not a word but an application; it is not war but peace; it 
does not weaken, but strengthens. Revolution does not cause separation; it 
generates togetherness.
-John Africa, Strategic Revolution

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