Walmart & the Sins of Our Fathers
“Judge King wrote that Ms. Braun had recounted the humiliating experience of soiling herself while at work because she had not been permitted time to use the restroom.”
I hope that the recent ruling by a Minnesota state judge, who found that Walmart violated state laws on wages more than two million times, marks the end of a culture that put profits ahead of people. Walmart has worked hard to change, but the past still takes a long time to go away. And while I like to cheer Walmart’s progress, the facts of this case are an astounding reminder of just how horribly big companies can behave. As reported yesterday in the New York Times:
- Walmart Stores could face more than $2 billion in fines.
- Judge Robert King Jr. also ruled that Walmart owed $6.5 million to 56,000 current and former employees because of contractual violations, including a failure to give workers promised rest breaks at least 1.5 million times.
- Four women filed the lawsuit in September 2001, contending that Walmart managers had often made employees work off the clock and denied them meal breaks and rest breaks that were promised in the employee handbook.
- In Pennsylvania in 2006, a jury awarded $78 million in a lawsuit against Walmart over rest breaks and off-the-clock work. Last year, a judge increased that award to $188 million to include damages, interest and lawyers’ fees.
- In a 2005 verdict in California, Walmart was ordered to pay $172 million for making employees miss meal breaks. The company has appealed both verdicts.
Altogether, Walmart faces more than 70 lawsuits, filed throughout the country, in which employees have accused the company of making them work off the clock or miss required breaks. Cheating people who make so little is pretty unconscionable. But to learn that the practice was part of a national strategy, well, that’s a sad statement on big business.