Wal-Mart Agrees to Pay $34 Million for Overtime Violations

Posted on January 31, 2007 by Christopher McKinney
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., has agreed to pay nearly $34 million in back wages and interest for calculating overtime incorrectly over a span of almost 5 years. The agreement with the Department of Labor covers 86,680 employees who worked for the company from February 1, 2002 to January 19, 2007. The department says that Wal-Mart brought the matter to its attention after an internal audit raised concerns regarding overtime calculations. Wal-Mart says it failed to include periodic bonuses and other earned income in determining some employees' regular rate of pay for overtime purposes. In addition, some overtime payments were based on a regular rate calculated for each two-week payroll period, when they should have been calculated weekly.LaborProfBlog makes two points regarding this story:
  1. He says Wal-Mart deserves credit for self-reporting this error; but
  2. It is very surprising that Wal-Mart's HR department allowed this to happen at all. This is not a complicated area of FLSA law.
While Wal-Mart does deserve some credit for self-reporting the issue, it is likely they did so because it was simply good business. By self-reporting and negotiating directly with the Labor Department, they were apparently able to cut a deal in which they are not required to pay any interest or penalties (including standard double damages) that they would most likely have had to pay had this been brought as a lawsuit against the company. It is also as yet unclear to me whether the Labor Department obtained all of the pay records at issue and calculated the wages owed themselves or whether they simply took Wal-Mart's word for what was owed.
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The Culture of Extreme Work

Posted on January 30, 2007 by Christopher McKinney

Friend of mine Michael Maslanka has an excellent article this month in Texas Lawyer entitled "A Plea for Sanity: How GCs Can Help Stop the Culture of Extreme Work". I encourage everyone to read it. The dangers of overworking employees is an issue that I have spoken on and written about here before. Mike's article is an excellent description of the problem and a thoughtful look at some possible solutions.

From the article:

Employees work too hard, and that's not good for business. Tired accounting staff don't add columns A and B correctly. Exhausted executives make rash decisions. Sleep-deprived employees driving home from a late night at the office run off the road or worse. I'm not talking about work-life balance. I'm talking about working to extremes.

Simply put, there's no return on investment on exhausted employees. It's the general counsel, the adviser and counselor to the company, who's often in the best position to put the work lives of the executives, managers and employees into a context that makes sense and that creates the biggest ROI.

Don't believe that overtired employees and execs are a problem? The December 2006 issue of the Harvard Business Review has an insightful article titled "Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Work Week." In it, authors Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Luce report that 62 percent of high-earning individuals work more than 50 hours per week, 35 percent work more than 60 hours per week and 10 percent work more than 80 hours per week.

Michael goes on to discuss some possible solutions including:

  • Creating a Sleep Policy for Employees;
  • Create a Policy Requiring Employees to take Vacation;
  • Provide Training to Supervisors on Dealing with Exhausted Employees
This is one of those issues that is not discussed enough in HR circles because of American's sick affection for the hard-driving overworked lifestyle. Do your company a favor and email Michael's article around or, better yet, set up a meeting to consider implementing some of his excellent suggestions.

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Union membership falls to 12% of U.S. workers

Posted on January 29, 2007 by Christopher McKinney

Union membership dropped to 12% of U.S. workers last year, extending a steady decline from the 1950s when more than a third belonged to unions.

After membership had held steady at 12.5% in 2005, it declined anew last year, a decrease of more than 325,000 workers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said.

Membership had been 20.1% in 1983, when the bureau first provided comparable numbers. About 35% of American workers were union members in the mid-1950s.

Source: LA Times

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Martin Luther King, Jr.

Posted on January 15, 2007 by Christopher McKinney

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." -- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.Sexual Harassment Pregnancy Discrimination Age Discrimination San Antonio Employment Lawyer Texas Employment Lawyer Texas Sexual Harassment Age Discrimination Texas Overtime Texas Age Discrimination

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Two new employment law blogs.

Posted on January 11, 2007 by Christopher McKinney

Colorodo employment attorney Peter Mullison has entered the law blog arena with Employment Law Colorado. It sports a great design and already has some excellent content. The California Employee Rights Blog is another new blog authored by James and Sara PetersI suggest you give both a visit and add them to your rss feed reader.

Welcome to the blogosphere Peter, James and Sara.Sexual Harassment Pregnancy Discrimination Age Discrimination San Antonio Employment Lawyer Texas Employment Lawyer Texas Sexual Harassment Age Discrimination Texas Overtime Texas Age Discrimination

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Supreme Court Issues Cert in "Cat's Paw" Case

Posted on January 8, 2007 by Christopher McKinney

EEOC v. BCI Coca-Cola Bottling Co. is a case out of the 10th Circuit involving the so-called "cat's paw" theory of liability. Put simply, it involves the issue of whether an employer is liable for discrimination in a discharge case where the decision-maker making the discharge decision had no discriminatory animus, but the discharged employee's direct supervisor (who provided information acted on by the decision-maker) arguably did.

Here is a link to the 10th Circuit opinion.

Here is a more detailed summary of the case below from Ross' Employment Blog.

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Restless Work Force - 45% of Employees Plan to Seek a Better Job This Year

Posted on January 4, 2007 by Christopher McKinney

Discontented workers, lured by promises of better salaries and more opportunities, could move in sizable numbers to new jobs this year, a national survey by Yahoo HotJobs shows. The online survey of 5,331 workers showed 45 percent planned to change jobs at some time during 2007 and only about one-third were so satisfied with their current position they were not expecting to look.

Given that this was an internet survey, the fact that internet users tend to be younger and more affluent thant the geeral public should be taken into considerationSee more coverage here.

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