Employees v Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Hit with Another Time-Shaving Class Action Lawsuit
According to a recently filed class action, Wal-Mart essentially steals from its employees. In the lawsuit, three former employees at the South Charleston store seek to represent every employee Wal-Mart has cheated in West Virginia since 1989.
Attorneys that filed the complaint claim punitive damages for conscious disregard of employee rights and ask for injunctive relief to reform the "corporate culture."
"Wal-Mart attempted to conceal its wrongdoing by causing a retraction to be published, which served to further extend its active and ongoing campaign to fraudulently conceal the nefarious conduct," the suit states.
"Such evidence is contained in Wal-Mart's state of the art time keeping system, which requires expert analysis to detect and comprehend," the suit states. "In many instances, the amounts stolen by Wal-Mart from individual class members was small, but in the aggregate, the compensation wrongfully retained by Wal-Mart was substantial ..."
The suit is filed on behalf of Pam Brogan, Jane Markins and Francis Gail Patterson, former employees at Wal-Mart in South Charleston.
The suit states that Wal-Mart routinely asks employees to complete assignments while not clocked in and that Wal-Mart altered records to make it appear employees took full meal breaks when they worked part of the time.
The lawsuit claims Wal-Mart deleted hours over 40 and shaved time through other unlawful means.
The suit seeks damages for conversion, unjust enrichment, breach of contract, and breach of good faith and fair dealing. It also claims violations of West Virginia wage laws.
