WAL-MART – Settles Wage Hour Claims
Wal-Mart continues to deny any wrong doing with respect to a class action suit brought by employees in the State of Washington alleging they were denied meal times and rest breaks and were forced to work off the clock. Despite their insistence of innocence, management decided to pay out $35 million rather than go to court. [Huffington Post provides a nice summary.] This does not help their image, but anyone familiar with wage hour regulations might understand how they got themselves into a pickle.
Workplace policies that state work should not be performed during the meal break, or during off work hours often do not reflect what is actually going on as vigilant employers will report. I recall my early days in the workplace when a husband of an office assistant called the wage hour and complained that his wife was working overtime without getting paid. The wage hour investigators arrived and audited the company from top to bottom. Employees did not know, in most cases, why certain questions were being asked, but since time records did not accurately reflect what the employees were telling the investigators, the end result was a settlement that was largely due to poor enforcement of policy.
Here is a word of clarification and a word of caution regarding this case: first, the State of Washington requires employees be provided a meal and rest break. This is not the case in many states (including Pennsylvania) and so this aspect of the case relates to Washington labor law. At the federal level, the Fair Labor Standards Act requires only that a break be counted as time worked if it is interrupted. A safe policy is a minimum of 30 uninterrupted minutes for meals. In addition, rest periods of 20 minutes or less must generally be counted as time worked.
So, we will never know the particulars of the Wal-Mart case since it was settled out of court. But it is very likely that the problem for the company was in part the record of work time. Therefore, be advised that you should have a policy that states employees must leave their work area for meal periods and may not perform work before or after work unless authorized for overtime. However, if you have a policy but look the other way when it continues to occur, you are permitting the work and are possibly treading down the same path as Wal-Mart.
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