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Wal-Mart Workers Win Damages

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The Associated Press

Published: October 4, 2007

PHILADELPHIA - Wal-Mart workers in Pennsylvania who previously won a $78.5 million class-action award for working off the clock will share an additional $62.3 million in damages, a judge ruled Wednesday.

About 125,000 people will receive $500 each in damages under a state law invoked when a company, without cause, withholds pay for more than 30 days.

A Philadelphia jury last year awarded the workers the exact amount they had sought, rejecting Wal-Mart's claim that some people chose to work through breaks or that a few minutes of extra work here and there was insignificant.

'Just as highly paid executives' promised equity interests or put options or percentage of sale proceeds are protected fringe benefits and wage supplements, so too the monetary equivalents of 'paid break' time cashiers and other employees were prohibited from taking are protected fringe benefits and wage supplements,' Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Mark Bernstein wrote.

Similar suits are in play across the country.

A California trial ended with a $172 million verdict that Wal-Mart is appealing, and the Bentonville, Ark.-based company settled a Colorado suit for $50 million. A trial opened last week in Minnesota, and suits are pending in New Jersey and several other states.

The Pennsylvania suit involves 187,000 current and former employees of Wal-Mart and Sam's Clubs from March 1998 through May 2006.

The employees have not yet received any money and likely won't for some time if the company appeals.

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