http://www.salon.com/2013/12/16/finally_paying_for_wal_marts_sins_wage_theft_settlement_yields_millions/
Monday, Dec 16, 2013 08:30 AM EST
Finally paying for Wal-Mart’s sins: Wage theft settlement yields millions
Warehouse workers win payment after charging abuse and fraud -- as
parallel Wal-Mart supply chain battles rage on
Josh Eidelson
Workers at a California Wal-Mart warehouse are owed $4.7 million for
alleged theft of their wages, under a proposed settlement approved this
week by a federal judge. The 568 workers were employed by the Wal-Mart
contractor Schneider. All of the goods they move are for Wal-Mart, and
the facility where they worked is partially owned by Wal-Mart.
A Schneider spokesperson emailed, “Per the settlement, I can only
confirm for you that this matter has settled on terms acceptable to the
parties.” Wal-Mart did not respond to a request for comment on the case,
Quezada v. Schneider. A spokesperson noted to the Huffington Post that
the workers were not legally employed by Wal-Mart, and said, “We’ve
developed a program where we do independent audits of each of our
third-party-run warehouses, to make sure they’re following all aspects
of law.”
“The brave workers who came forward to expose a deep pattern of abuse
and fraud in Walmart’s largest [western U.S.] contracted facility risked
their jobs and their livelihoods, but today they are vindicated,” said
Warehouse Workers United Director Guadalupe Palma in an emailed
statement. According to WWU, an expert’s review of 216,281 shifts there
found that supervisors “shaved employees’ time” from time cards in 5.95
percent of shifts, denying them legally required pay.
WWU, a project of the Change to Win union federation, has worked in
concert with the union-backed retail workers’ group OUR Walmart to pull
off a series of strikes in the Wal-Mart supply chain since 2012.
Workers’ lawsuits have represented one front in labor’s efforts to hold
Wal-Mart accountable for conditions of its suppliers and contractors,
which advocates argue are largely determined by Wal-Mart directives. In
March, Judge Christina Snyder barred Schneider from communicating with
employees about the Quezada suit without permission, on the grounds that
it had behaved in “deceptive” and “coercive” ways in securing written
statements from employees designed to undermine the plaintiffs’ case.
In court filings reported by the Huffington Post, lead plaintiff Quezada
said, “I was often forced by my supervisors at the end of my shifts to
sign forms saying I voluntarily waived my right to my meal breaks…
Nothing about that process was voluntary, since I was being forced to sign.”
While Quezada appears resolved, the parallel case Carrillo v. Schneider,
involving workers subcontracted through Schneider in the same facility,
remains ongoing. Unlike Quezada, Judge Snyder has found sufficient
evidence to add Wal-Mart itself as a named defendant in Carrillo. Last
year, a Wal-Mart spokesperson told me that Wal-Mart was merely
“Schneider’s customer. We have a set of business needs that we pay them
to meet just like any company might hire an accounting firm to do taxes
or an advertising firm to help launch a new product.” But workers’
attorneys presented evidence that Wal-Mart directs Schneider’s
decisions, ranging from when a printer’s ink needs to be refilled to
when to assign more or fewer workers to the unloading of a certain truck.
Schneider was also named in a February complaint issued by the National
Labor Relations Board alleging that Schneider and three other companies
it directly or indirectly employs illegally threatened or punished
warehouse workers at a Wal-Mart-owned facility in Illinois, in an effort
to discourage labor activism.
--
Darryl McMahon
Failure is not an option;
it comes standard.
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