Wal-Mart and workers

Wal-Mart has announced that it will pay $54.25 million to settle a class-action lawsuit against the company. The lawsuit claims that Wal-Mart "cut workers' break time and didn't prevent employees from working off the clock in Minnesota."

In July, a Dakota County judge ruled against Wal-Mart in the lawsuit, saying the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer violated state labor laws 2 million times by cutting worker break time and "willfully" not stopping managers from having employees work off the clock. Court proceedings had been scheduled for next month to determine punitive damages, and Wal-Mart could have faced more than $2 billion in damages. Instead, the settlement announced Tuesday will have a preliminary hearing for approval on Jan. 14.

Justin Perl, a lead attorney for the plaintifffs, said he was "gratified that these hourly workers will now be paid after seven years of litigation."

Wal-Mart's actions towards the workers shouldn't come as a shock to anyone. This is the company that shut down their entire in-store butcher department, company wide, because ten workers in Texas joined the United Food and Commercial Workers.

Earlier this month, they were forced to allow unionization at a store in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. Of course, Wal-Mart is appealing the ruling. Now there are worries that Wal-Mart will simply close the store. A few years earlier, workers at a store in Jonquière, Quebec gained union certification. Shortly thereafter, Wal-Mart announced they would close the store.

It's not just their own workers that they take advantage of in pursuit of higher profits. In Connecticut, Wal-Mart admitted that they violated state law by charging a second tax on exchanges.

Wal-Mart charged the tax for people who didn't have receipts as well as some who had credit card statements proving that they had bought the item recently. The taxes were turned over to the state....

...Stores even had posters behind courtesy desks blaming the state for its policy.

"State law PROHIBITS Wal-Mart from refunding SALES TAX to any customer returning or exchanging merchandise without an original purchase receipt," the "tax refund laws" posters said.

However, state tax laws clearly say the opposite, state Consumer Protection Commissioner Jerry Farrell Jr. said Wednesday in an interview explaining the out-of-court settlement he reached with Wal-Mart.

State laws mandate that if a company has an exchange policy, it cannot charge a second sales tax on the new item. Wal-Mart's website clearly says it has such an exchange policy.

Wal-Mart - Bad for workers, bad for customers.

If you still have holiday shopping to do, please think about taking your business elsewhere. You can find more information about Wal-Mart and their business practices by taking the link below.