Workers win pay for meal breaks

Forty similar suits have been filed against Wal-Mart. Picture / Reuters

LOS ANGELES - Wal-Mart has been told to pay US$172.3 million ($255.8 million) by a Californian jury that found the company illegally prevented workers from taking meal breaks.
The verdict came after a three-month trial in a lawsuit accusing Wal-Mart of failing to give employees lunch breaks or compensation for not taking them between 2001 and 2005. The jury awarded US$115 million in punitive damages and US$57.3 million in compensatory damages to the workers.

Forty similar suits have been filed against the world's biggest retailer in other states. An Oregon jury awarded about 90 Wal-Mart workers about US$2000 each last year and another case in Colorado settled for US$50 million. The company also faces a sexual discrimination lawsuit filed on behalf of as many as 1.6 million female workers.

"It's another sad day where Americans learn the truth about Wal-Mart's business practices and the depths they will go to provide so-called low prices," said Chris Kofinis, a spokesman for Wake-Up Wal-Mart, which is funded by the Food and Commercial Workers Union.

Neal Manne, a lawyer for the company, said Wal-Mart would appeal.

"We obviously disagree with their findings," Manne said. "This was a case about some compliance problems at Wal-Mart a number of years ago. We are in 100 per cent compliance with the laws."

Arkansas-based Wal-Mart said the "case involved a meal-period statute that is unique to California. It has no bearing on any other state."

Fred Furth, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said: "You can't come into the state of California and break its laws. "It was a matter of understaffing at Wal-Mart."

As many as 115,919 present and former workers at 186 Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores were not given meal breaks or compensated for not taking them, Furth said at opening arguments in the case in September.

"If the employer in any way signals that employees are not to take their lunch breaks, or they signal that they prefer that the employee work through the lunch break, that is a dangerous practice," said Arthur Silbergeld, an employment lawyer in Los Angeles.

"The punitive damages suggest that Wal-Mart in some way prevented the taking of the meal period."

- BLOOMBERG