posted on Monday, October 16, 2006 12:53 PM
by
Rod Satterwhite
Friday the 13th
Friday the 13th proved to be quite unlucky for Wal-Mart. Last Friday, a state court jury in Philadelphia awarded nearly $78 million in damages to a class of current and former Pennsylvania employees of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (Braun v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., No 020303127, damages award 10/13/06). The damages award came just one day after a jury verdict finding Wal-Mart, Pennsylvania’s largest private employer, had violated state wage and break laws by failing to pay employees during rest breaks and for work they did off the clock. The employees are expected to seek an additional $62 million in liquidated damages for willfully violating state law. According to one former employee, the workers were expected to do “whatever it takes to get done, and if that meant missing your break, that’s what had to be done.” Wal-Mart issued a statement on Friday indicating that it intends to appeal the jury award. The Pennsylvania verdict comes less than one year after a California jury ordered Wal-Mart to pay $172 million to a class of California employees for violation of state meal break laws.
Take-away: It's easy to see how a manager's efforts to motivate employees could quickly become Exhibit A in a case like this. These days, every successful business is customer-focused in one way or another, and encourages its employees to adopt that same "whatever it takes" attitude. Employers should be careful, however, to monitor (or at least spot-check) what's being said to employees -- in training sessions and in the work environment. Supervisors must be educated to temper their "motivational" comments so they aren't later misconstrued as an instruction to work off the clock. On wage and hour issues, an ounce of prevention can literally be worth $78 million of cure.