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

“We are delighted by this verdict. Over one hundred thousand current and former Wal-Mart workers will finally get the justice they deserve and rightfully earned. It is a sad day when Wal-Mart provides these so-called low prices by exploiting their workers and even the law.

Wal-Mart has already lost the battle in the court of public opinion, now Wal-Mart has lost the battle in a court of law as well. The size of this verdict speaks loudly to the disdain Americans have for multi-billion dollar company’s needlessly exploiting their workers. Furthermore, this lawsuit is just the beginning of other class action lawsuits highlighting Wal-Mart’s practice of unfairly or illegally exploiting their workers.”

Article from the AP is below the fold.

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.

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