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Thursday, Dec. 22, 2005

California jury awards $172 million to Wal-Mart workers denied lunch breaks

By DAVID KRAVETS Associated Press Writer

(AP) - OAKLAND, California-A California jury on Thursday awarded $172
million (€145.5 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 (€48.2
million) in general damages and $115 million (€97.3 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 (€175 million)
after a court clerk misread the punitive damages as $150 million
(€126.9 million). The amount of punitive damages was later clarified.

The class-action lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court is one of
about 40 in the U.S. alleging workplace violations by Wal-Mart, and the
first to go to trial. The Bentonville, Arkansas-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
(€55.8 million) plus interest, and sought damages to punish the
company for alleged wrongdoing.

The lawsuit was filed by several former Wal-Mart employees in the San
Francisco Bay area in 2001. It took four years of legal wrangling to get
to trial.

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. 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.

A federal lawsuit pending in San Francisco federal court accuses the
company of paying men more than women.

2005-12-22

Copyright 2005

The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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Sklep "Biedronka" pod spodem - halas.

kermit 2006-01-27 15:10

Biedronka :-)

nelson 2006-08-06 21:56