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| $78 Million PA Verdict Against Wal-Mart |
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| 10/18/2006 |
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ROBIN'S PERSPECTIVE: A Philadelphia jury has awarded nearly $78.5 million to a class of some 186,000 current and former employees of Pennsylvania Wal-Marts as payment for missed rest breaks ($76 million) and off-the-clock work ($2.5 million). Wal-Mart had tried to convince the jury to award only $7 million.
The award in Hummel v. Wal-Mart is compensation for actual losses, and doesn't include punitive damages or liquidated damages. Under the Pennsylvania Wage Payment and Collection Act, liquidated damages, costs and attorney fees will also be awarded-- putting the possible grand total Wal-Mart will have to pay at $180 million!
Wal-Mart is the 800-pound gorilla of the discount retail industry. This decision may help level the playing field for its competitors who do abide by employment laws in how they treat their employees. Since the Hummel verdict marks the second major jury award Wal-Mart has been hit with just this year for failure to pay workers for missed break time, it hopefully will be a wake-up call to company management that they truly are not above the law despite their size and might. (In January, a California jury awarded $172 million to an 115,000-member class of Wal-Mart employees with break-pay grievances similar to those in Hummel.)
It was especially distressing to me in January of 2006, as the judge was deciding whether or not to certify the Hummel class, that Wal-Mart used a series of videotapes of allegedly happy employees indicating that any missed breaks, lunch time, or off-the-clock work, was done voluntarily, due to how much the employees loved their work. In announcing his decision to certify the Hummel class, Judge Bernstein likened that attempt to how captured prisoners of war can be coerced into providing statements in support of their captors. What an amazingly symbolic and on-point comment about what it must be like for so many workers who are put into positions of doing “whatever it takes” just to keep their jobs.
Recent events in the news have sensitized everyone to the fact that far too often, management looks the other way when unethical behavior, illegal behavior and harassment are occurring right under their noses. Even when people complain about unfair or illegal treatment, their complaints are often not believed – and the ones who speak up are the ones driven out of the company, not the perpetrators.
Jury verdicts like those in Hummel will hopefully restore a sense of accountability to management's mindset, and give hope to workers that justice can prevail. Wal-Mart has no doubt learned some key lessons lately about the high price to be paid once you get caught.
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