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(回答先: 残業代４０億円払います／米ウォルマート／他に係争中の案件も（しんぶん赤旗） 投稿者 gataro 日時 2007 年 1 月 28 日 15:06:04)
NYTimes ⇒
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/26/business/26walmart.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Wal-Mart Settles U.S. Suit About Overtime
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By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: January 26, 2007
The United States Labor Department announced yesterday that Wal-Mart Stores had agreed to pay $33.5 million in back wages plus interest to settle a federal lawsuit that accused the company of violating overtime laws involving 86,680 workers.
Department officials said many of the violations involved failing to pay time-and-a-half premium pay to managers in training, programmers in training and some other salaried, nonmanagerial employees when they worked more than 40 hours a week.
The department also accused Wal-Mart of violating the Fair Labor Standards Act, the federal law that governs overtime, by failing to properly include factors like bonuses and geographical differentials in calculating the base wages to determine the time-and-a-half rate.
Steven J. Mandel, associate solicitor in the department’s Fair Labor Standards Division, praised Wal-Mart for bringing the overtime problem to the government’s attention. He said the settlement was one of the largest ever reached by the department under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which requires employers to pay an overtime premium to employees who work more than 40 hours a week, except for some salaried employees like top managers.
More than 40 state lawsuits have been filed against Wal-Mart, accusing it of making employees, whom it calls associates, work off the clock and often not paying them all the overtime they had earned. Most of those lawsuits are pending.
But Wal-Mart officials said that yesterday’s developments showed that the company had made major improvements in wage compliance. They noted that not only had Wal-Mart alerted the Labor Department to the overtime problems after finding them in an internal audit, but that Wal-Mart had already corrected all the calculations.
“We want our associates to know that the situation has been fixed, that overtime calculations now are being done correctly, and that we’ve added safeguards to our payroll processes to make sure these types of errors don’t happen again,” said Sue Oliver, senior vice president of Wal-Mart’s human resources division.
In the consent decree filed in Federal District Court for the Western District of Arkansas in Fort Smith, Wal-Mart, as it often does, denied any liability for the accusations in the lawsuit. It denied “any wrongdoing and liability whatsoever” under the fair labor act “or any other law.” It also denied that “any of the facts” that the federal government alleged “or could have alleged are true.”
The average compensation for the nearly 87,000 employees will be around $375. Wal-Mart said 75 employees would receive more than $10,000 in back wages; Mr. Mandel said the highest amount anyone would receive was $39,775. The employees are also to receive interest.
Many companies have stumbled in calculating the base pay for establishing overtime pay. In this case, the Labor Department accused Wal-Mart of making improper and illegal calculations by computing pay on a biweekly rate rather than a weekly rate. The department also accused Wal-Mart of including vacation and sick pay in determining the base hourly rate, yielding a lower rate.
“I don’t think these are particularly unusual violations,” said John Simley, a Wal-Mart spokesman.
Federal officials said Wal-Mart had predetermined the salaries of some managers in training and others based on a 45-hour or 48-hour week, but had nonetheless broken the law when it did not pay them overtime when they worked more than 40 hours.
Mr. Mandel said the violations involved Wal-Mart stores in all 50 states, Washington and Puerto Rico.
“They brought it to our attention because they wanted our supervision and they wanted our monitoring of these complicated efforts,” Mr. Mandel said.Ms. Oliver, the senior vice president, said Wal-Mart showed its good faith by volunteering to pay five years of back wages, while the Labor Department often seeks just two years of back wages. “We are committed to our associates, and we apologize to them for this error,” Ms. Oliver said. “We work very hard to make sure associates are compensated correctly.”
LATimes ⇒
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-walmart26jan26,1,5552184.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
Wal-Mart to pay $33-million settlement in overtime case
Workers shortchanged over the last five years are to get an average of $386 each. The retailer faces no penalties.
By Abigail Goldman, Times Staff Writer
January 26, 2007
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. agreed Thursday to pay more than $33 million to tens of thousands of workers who were shortchanged on overtime wages during the last five years.
The Labor Department said the settlement would average about $386 in back pay and interest for each of the 87,000 Wal-Mart employees.
"These are employees not making a lot of money, and so the fact that they did not get all of the overtime due is a significant problem," said Steven Mandel, a lawyer for the department's Fair Labor Standards Division. "$386 is real money."
The award is the second-largest case of its kind in the division's history, he said.
As part of the agreement, approved Thursday by U.S. District Judge Robert Dawson in Arkansas, Wal-Mart will not pay any fines or penalties. That incensed some of the company's critics.
"It appears that Wal-Mart will bear little cost beyond what it should have paid to workers in the first place," said U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. "That's unfortunate.
"Employers need to know that there will be serious consequences when they break the law and mistreat their workers."
But the Labor Department said the settlement was good because Wal-Mart agreed to pay five years of back pay, rather than the required two, and said it would use a website, a toll-free phone number and a search firm to locate former employees affected by the agreement.
Mandel said the world's largest retailer would also be subject to an injunction requiring it to follow rules for overtime pay, which means that any future violation could subject Wal-Mart to contempt-of-court charges.
Thursday's agreement grew out of a standard internal review in 2004, which revealed problems with determining the overtime pay rate for some employees, Wal-Mart said.
A Wal-Mart spokesman said the Bentonville, Ark.-based company brought the issues to the Labor Department in February 2005 after an internal probe.
During the review, Wal-Mart said it also found that 215,000 employees were overpaid by at least $20 during the same time period; Wal-Mart said it would not seek repayment.
As part of the settlement, the company will be required to repay all workers who were underpaid by at least $20 since 2002.
Some employees, however, will be getting much more. The Labor Department said one Wal-Mart worker would receive nearly $40,000 in back pay.
Glenn Rothner, a Pasadena attorney who represents unions and workers in civil rights and employment cases, questioned the fairness of the settlement, which by law prevents employees from filing private lawsuits in the matter.
"Wal-Mart wanted to strike a sweeter deal with the government, rather than let the matter go to litigation," Rothner said. "I've never heard of this happening."
Rothner also noted that the employees, who probably did not know that the pay problems existed, had no watch guard other than the Labor Department.
"One of the peculiar things about this settlement is that the court signed the consent decree on the same day that the lawsuit was filed," he said. "If the court is going to approve it, then it has an obligation to inquire into the fairness of the deal reached."
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