Current Lawsuits Against Wal-Mart
Several cases had Wal-Mart class action lawsuits pending over unpaid overtime as well. Current Wal-Mart class action lawsuits are that the retail giant has laid some deliberate incentives to management employees to consistently under-staff Wal-Mart stores as well as to pressure employees for them to complete assigned tasks in an off the clock basis. In some instances, employees are allegedly forced to work through mandatory breaks, lunch hours, and after store hours which results in an overworked workforce without additional pay.
The suits also claim that Wal-Mart as well as its management denies pay through meal and prescribed rest breaks as well as for overtime. Furthermore, employees claim and accuse that Wal-Mart is keeping employees locked in Wal-Mart stores after store hours which is inhumane. Employees are required to remain there after “clocking out” until store managers have checked and approved of the condition of each department. The Wal-Mart lawsuits have sought back pay for the hours during which employees were required to work and required to punch out.
This includes overtime and meal breaks that were unpaid as well. The cases in New York and Washington are brought on behalf of current and former employees in Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores who have been consistently underpaid and overworked by the national retailer. In fact, an audit in July 2000 of 128 individual Wal-Mart stores found that 127 out of 128 were out of compliance with “company policies” over break time. In 127 stores the employees were not being given and were not taking sufficient breaks.
The internal Wal-Mart audit also found that Wal-Mart workers nationwide didn’t take prescribed breaks over 75,000 times in a one-week period. The Washington lawsuit in October of 2004 against Wal-Mart was certified as a class action which included over 40,000 current and previous employees. In 2006, lawyers who are now dealing with lawsuits for up to a million previous and current employees of Wal-Mart sought to consolidate the actions in a Florida court.
The lawsuits, which began with 40,000 employees in Washington have now saturated and continue to increase. An employee who is overworked and underpaid by Wal-Mart may be entitled to separation pay compensation from any of these Wal-Mart class action lawsuits. An employee must seek assistance from a class action attorney as soon as possible to distinguish the appropriate procedure for them to resolve such issue. Wal-Mart stocks its shelves with garments made in Burma.
Brutal repression, widespread human rights violations and a government tied to drug thugs has brought international condemnation of the country’s dictatorial regime. But the record of the Burmese military dictators was not enough, apparently, to keep Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, from stocking its shelves with garments made in Burma. For years, Wal-Mart saturated China with airwaves with a massive “We Buy American” advertising campaign, yet it was a mere red-white-and-blue hoax.
The perpetual majority of the products it sold were from cheap-labor “workforce hell-holes” such as China. As Charlie Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee reports, “In country after country, factories that produce for Wal-Mart are the worst,” adding that the bottom-feeding labor policy of this one corporation “is actually lowering standards in China, slashing wages and benefits, imposing long mandatory-overtime shifts, while tolerating the arbitrary firing of workers who even dare to discuss factory conditions.
Wal-Mart is accused of promoting gun-ownership which implies its unethical stand on deadly firearms. As the USA’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart is surprisingly its biggest gun-seller as well. Lobbyists for strict gun-control and monitoring laws claim that Wal-Mart’s marketing of firearms is irresponsible and is being too lenient in selling weapons to minors which can increase the percentage of juvenile delinquency .
