Wal-Mart loses $187.6M worker break case

I made no accusations LJ, I merely pointed out the obvious - that physically being at one's place of employment for 8 hours is not the same as working 8 hours for your employer under the federal law. While true that the employer is required to allow you a break from the task which you are being paid to perform at specified intervals and for a specified length of time, it does not require that you be paid when you are taking that break. My last recollection of the law, and I will admit it has been a while since I needed to worry about following it, each 8 hours of work required 2 15 minute breaks and one 30 minute meal break for a total of 1 hour. Since you were not required to be paid for this 1 hour, you would be at your place of employment for 9 hours of time and only receive 8 hours of compensation. I also seem to recall that while the employer had to offer the break to you, they were under no obligation to compel you to take the breaks provided for in the law.

I myself have been employed in the printing industry for a number of years. Having a set schedule of breaks is not compatible with efficient production in this industry. There were many times when I had a press running a single job for longer than 2 hours at a stretch, sometimes the same job was on the press for multiple days if the quantity was large enough. When I got those jobs, I would take my breaks when and where I could instead of at specified intervals. Of course, that would violate the letter of the federal law mind you, but the law isn't meant to be so inflexible that such instances are prohibited from occurring.

If the law is that you are to receive a break period for every 2 hours of work performed and on occasion you miss one or two of those breaks on a given day due to volume of work, that is not the same thing as denying the breaks to the workers on a regular or continuing basis. I have not seen the evidence in the case, nor have I read the ruling issued any of the courts that have heard it, so I can't comment specifically on any of the members of the class act. In general, however, nearly everyone who has ever worked for someone else has experienced situations where their federally mandated breaks didn't happen from time to time.

My guess is that a fair number of the breaks didn't happen because someone was taking one of the sick days provided as a benefit to employees and no one else was available to cover the shift of the missing worker (probably so they could go attend to personal matters which is how most sick days are used) and that placed additional burdens upon their fellow employees, who then either didn't get their federally mandated breaks at all or took ones shorter than the law requires. Let's face it, being a greeter, stocker or check out clerk isn't a career job for most people. That being the case, they are less motivated to come to work on any given day than the manager of the store usually is and less concerned with the additional burden their selfishness is placing upon the shoulders of their manager and their fellow workers. Low skill jobs generally have a higher incidence of absenteeism than highly skilled ones do because workers with fewer skills and less education are generally not as motivated to succeed as ones with higher educations and highly trained skills are. If you can stock shelves at Wal-Mart, you can pretty much stock shelves in any retail environment, same for running the items over the scanner in the checkout line. The worker and the employer both recognize that they can find either another place or another person to do the same work without too much difficulty - and they are both right in that regard.

One also must take into consideration the villification of corporations that has occurred in our society over the course of the last couple of decades when thinking about the mindset of the jury when they rendered their verdict. If you can get a group of jurors to award a person a huge amount of money because they spilled a cup of hot coffee into their own lap after they removed the lid from the cup, almost anything is possible - including simply taking advantage of an opportunity to take away some of the money from a big evil corporation who obviously made too much profit gouging the consumers and kept it for themselves instead of redistributing it to their workers or lowering their profit margins so that they didn't make so much profit.

Your "guess" assumes scenarios that have nothing to do with the facts of the case...But thanks for trying...

If this were a miscarriage of justice, then the appellate court would have struck it down. This was an appellate review, and the higher court ruled that there were no errors in the original trial. Have fun trying to twist this into a "poor corporations beset by low-wage rabble" all you wish.

If you have specific knowledge that some of the 187,000 plaintiffs were at fault, I'd love to see your source. Otherwise, you are just spewing the usual know-nothing assumptions based on your corporatocracy mindset.

Wal-Mart broke the law. What they did was illegal...It's been upheld by the appellate court.

Too bad, so sad...

Ok - so you are scheduled to work 10 hours, and it is stipulated at the time of your employment that while you will get your two 15 minute breaks and a half hour lunch, you won't be paid for them. Ok - so that still leaves 9 hours. If I'm suddenly only getting paid for 6, 7, 8 of those hours, I'm going to take exception to that.

Why wouldn't you? Or do you find it acceptable to give your work away for free?

It's no coincidence, notes President Cecil Roberts of the United Mine Workers Union, that several major mine disasters recently were at nonunion mines.

I wouldn't trust the President of the United Mine Workers Union to give me an honest answer to any question - any at all. This guy is a political stooge for the unions- and is the worst possible person to comment on the safety of non-union mines. Total bullsh*t!

Almost every coal mine in the western USA is a non-union mine. they have exemplary records on safety. Almost all the mine accidents I have heard about recently were back east- in union mines. Those mines have been union for decades.

Really- when was the last time you heard of a mining accident in Wyoming?

Several attempts have been made to unionize the coal mines in wyoming over the last 30 years. According to law- these mines have to let these union goons come in periodically to pressure the workers - and they have to have a vote to unionize. Every single time this has been attempted, the workers have voted the union out. The workers out here in the west know they have a much better deal without a union. They make better money- their work is based on productivity so the better workers make more money. They have better safety records than back east because most of the mines in the west are surface mines as opposed to the underground mines they have back east.

I don't know where SC dug up that trash- but it is a slap in the face to all the awsome coal workers we have here in the western US.

FYI- most of the coal used to power this country comes from places like the Black Thunder coal mine in Wyoming- the largest coal mine in the country (and world) - where workers are treated very well, make a great living for their family and live a good life.

And speaking of unions- have a look at this article about unionization at Walmart- it came out yesterday! This shows how far the unions will go to advance their political agenda- even though Walmart employee's themselves have voted the union out time and again.

They will not give up- like the group that is pushing for a Rec District in Conifer- they keep coming back again and again even after they have been voted down several times.

After numerous FAILED attempts to unionize Wal-Mart stores, the nation’s main union for retail workers has decided to try a different approach: it has helped create a new, nonunion group of Wal-Mart employees that intends to press for better pay, benefits and most of all, more respect at work.

The group, Organization United for Respect at Walmart, or OUR Walmart for short, says it has quietly signed up thousands of members in recent months, and it is going public this week with a Web site, ourwalmart.org, and a Facebook page.

The truth is.....

“The fact is our wages and benefits typically exceed those provided by the majority of our competition,” Mr. Tovar added. “As a result, our associates have concluded time and again that they are better off with the pay, benefits package and opportunities for advancement provided by Wal-Mart and have chosen to reject unions.”

Here's the whole article....
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/WalMart-Workers-Try-the-nytimes-2826745207.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=9&asset=&ccode=

It couldn't be that the threat of unionization is what keeps their pay and benefits at a reasonable level....nah, couldn't be that. Walmart does it out of the goodness of their heart.....just look at their past performance.

Walmart does it out of the goodness of their heart

Yes they do- which is why most of the workers keep voting the union out- despite a few trouble makers who keep trying to stir up trouble.

Sounds to me like walmart is treating their employee's just fine for now- good thing the company has a good heart!

BearMtnHIB wrote:

Walmart does it out of the goodness of their heart

Yes they do- which is why most of the workers keep voting the union out- despite a few trouble makers who keep trying to stir up trouble.

Sounds to me like walmart is treating their employee's just fine for now- good thing the company has a good heart!

OK.....contrary to what HEARTLESS thinks, I know humor when I see it and that post was downright funny!!!

:rofl

Good thing there are courts to enforce Wal-Mart's "goodness" when it goes off the rails into tactics that are ILLEGAL.