KANSAS CITY, Mo. — After finishing her 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. shift, Verette Richardson clocked out and was heading to her car when a Wal-Mart manager ordered her to turn around and straighten up the store's apparel department.þþEager not to get on her boss's bad side, she said, she spent the next hour working unpaid, tidying racks of slacks and blouses and picking up hangers and clothes that had fallen to the floor. Other times after clocking out, she was ordered to round up shopping carts in the parking lot.þþSome days, as soon as she walked in a manager told her to rush to a cash register and start ringing up purchases, without clocking in. Sometimes, she said, she worked for three hours before clocking in. þþÿThey wanted us to do a lot of work for no pay,ÿ said Ms. Richardson, who worked from 1995 to 2000 at a Wal-Mart in southeast Kansas City. ÿA company that makes billions of dollars doesn't have to do that.ÿ þþBut she and 40 other current and former Wal-Mart workers interviewed over the last four months say Wal-Mart has done just that, forcing or pressuring employees to work hours that were not recorded or paid. Federal and state laws bar employers from making hourly employees work unpaid hours. Wal-Mart's policies forbid such work. But many current and former workers and managers said an intense focus on cost cutting had created an unofficial policy that encouraged managers to request or require off-the-clock work and avoid paying overtime.þþAccusations like these are at the heart of a wide-ranging legal battle between Wal-Mart and employees or former employees in 28 states. In class-action and individual lawsuits, workers assert that these practices have helped Wal-Mart undersell the competition, push up profits and become the world's largest retailer.þþIn the process, these lawsuits contend, the company has cheated Wal-Mart employees and workers at its warehouse-store division, Sam's Club, out of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.þþWal-Mart officials insist that the off-the-clock phenomenon is minimal considering that the company has 3,250 stores and a million employees in the United States. The officials say the company, based in Bentonville, Ark., has a strong policy against such work, a policy that is spelled out in the handbook distributed to every employee.þþÿOff-the-clock work is an infrequent and isolated problem, which we correct whenever we become aware of it,ÿ said William Wertz, a Wal-Mart spokesman. ÿIt is Wal-Mart's policy to pay its employees properly for the hours they work.ÿþþMr. Wertz said managers who required or requested off-the-clock work were subject to disciplinary action, including dismissal.þþTwo years ago, Wal-Mart paid $50 million to settle a class-action suit that asserted that 69,000 current and former Wal-Mart employees in Colorado had worked off the clock. þþBut legal papers and interviews with workers suggest that the off-the-clock problems go far beyond Colorado. In depositions and in interviews with The New York Times, Wal-Mart employees in 18 states described these types of off-the-clock work:þþ¶Former employees at stores in California, Louisiana, New York, Ohio, Oregon and Washington said that many evenings when their stores closed, managers locked the front door and prevented workers — even those who had clocked out — from leaving until everyone finished straightening the store. Workers said these lock-ins, which aim to prevent theft, forced many employees to work an hour or two unpaid and enraged parents whose school-age children worked at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart officials acknowledged that employees were sometimes locked in but said the policy was to pay workers for every hour they were. þþ¶Employees at stores in six states said managers ordered them to clock out after their eight-hour shifts and then continue working.þþÿWe worked off the clock pretty much every shift,ÿ said Shannon Snyder, who worked two years ago stocking the health and beauty aids department at a Wal-Mart in Paso Robles, Calif. ÿThe manager said if our jobs were not finished, we had to clock out and finish our jobs so no overtime would show up.ÿþþ¶Some employees said they frequently took it upon themselves to clock out after their regular shift and then return to work, with their managers' knowledge and approval. They said they feared that if they did not finish their daily tasks before going home, they would be written up or fired. þþÿYou have to accomplish your job for that day,ÿ said Charlotte Johnson, who worked at Wal-Marts and Sam's Clubs in Georgia, Oklahoma and California for a decade before retiring this year. ÿIf you don't finish it, you're more or less in hot water with your manager.ÿþþ¶A dozen Wal-Mart workers, including four in the payroll department, said managers deleted hours from employee timecards to avoid paying overtime. Wal-Mart officials said the company strictly forbade this practice and disciplined managers who did it.þþSeveral current Wal-Mart employees said that despite the lawsuits, the problems continue. Alan Peto, who works at a Sam's Club in Las Vegas, said he worked off the clock several times each week while overseeing the electronics and hardware departments several years ago.þþÿThey give you a lot of work to do, and there is no possible way to do that in the seven and a half or eight hours you've been assigned,ÿ he said. ÿSo you feel pressure to clock out and do what you need to do.ÿþþRewarding the Cost-CutterþþþAlthough company policy prohibits off-the-clock work, Wal-Mart has created a system of rewards and punishments that critics say gives managers strong incentives to demand such work.þþUnder one bedrock policy, described in a deposition by a senior payroll executive, store managers are ordered to keep payroll costs below a target that headquarters sets for every store. If a store misses its target, several former executives said, the store manager faces a reprimand and sometimes demotion or dismissal.þþAnother policy strongly discourages overtime pay. A Wal-Mart handbook says managers are not to schedule workers for overtime, and several former store managers said the district and regional managers above them continually warned of a ÿzero toleranceÿ policy toward overtime, except during the busy holiday season. These former managers said managers were frequently reprimanded when they allowed workers to clock more than 40 hours in a week, enabling the workers to receive time-and-a-half pay.þþMost hourly Wal-Mart workers earn less than $8.50 an hour, which amounts to $17,680 a year for a full-time worker.þþ
Source: NY Times
