Wal-Mart owes Pennsylvania workers $78 million

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, owes its hourly employees in Pennsylvania $78 million for unpaid rest breaks and hours worked beyond their regular shifts, a jury ruled today in a class action lawsuit.

Jurors in state court in Philadelphia assessed the damages after 2 hours of deliberations. Yesterday, the 12-member panel sided with two former Wal-Mart employees, finding the company forced workers to miss rest breaks and work later hours without pay. The jury said the company did provide unpaid meal breaks as required by law.

Today's verdict is Wal-Mart's second multimillion dollar loss in a group-employee lawsuit filed over wages in less than a year. In December, a California jury awarded $172.3 million to the company's workers for missed meal breaks. In August, the judge in that case ordered Wal-Mart to obey state laws requiring rest breaks. More than 70 similar wage-and-hour suits have been filed against the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company.

"Wal-Mart still continues to cheat its workers. We're not the ones that are the liars—they are," Dolores Hummel, 53, one of the lead plaintiffs in the case, said before the verdict.

Lawyers for Hummel and Michele Braun claimed Wal-Mart made Pennsylvania workers skip more than 33 million rest breaks from 1998 to 2001 to boost productivity and curb labor costs. The two women sued the company on behalf of approximately 187,000 current and former hourly employees in the state.

'Serious Thought'

"They're going to have to give some serious thought to their labor relations policies," Jai Ghorpade, an emeritus professor of management at San Diego State University, said of the retailer. The verdict "might win their attention."

During the six-week trial, former Wal-Mart employees testified they were pressured by store managers to skip breaks and cut meals short. Two cashiers claimed they were locked in stores after their shifts ended and forced to restock merchandise before they could leave.

Lawyers blamed the missed rest breaks in part on Wal-Mart's staffing system, which based a store's staffing on its budgeted sales. The system led to personnel shortages at stores that made it impossible for workers to take breaks, the plaintiffs claimed.

Wal-Mart denied the claims, with executives testifying that the company required workers to take scheduled breaks and didn't ignore employee complaints. Company officials said records showed that workers appeared to miss their breaks because some chose not to take them or neglected to sign out.

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