By Steven Greenhouse
An internal audit now under court seal warned top executives at
Wal-Mart Stores three years ago that employee records at 128 stores
pointed to extensive violations of child labor laws and state
regulations requiring time for breaks and meals.
The audit of one week’s time clock records for roughly 25,000
employees found 1,371 instances in which minors apparently worked too
late at night, worked during school hours or worked too many hours in a
day. It also found 60,767 apparent instances of workers not taking
breaks, and 15,705 apparent instances of employees working through meal
times.
Officials at Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, employing 1.2
million people at its 3,500 stores in the United States, insisted that
the audit was meaningless, since what looked like violations could
simply reflect employees’ failure to punch in and out for breaks and
meals they took.
"Our view is that the audit really means nothing when you understand
Wal-Mart’s timekeeping system," said Mona Williams, Wal-Mart’s vice
president for communications. She said Wal-Mart did nothing in response
to the audit, saying it always strives to comply with the law.
But missed breaks and lunches have become a major issue in more than
40 lawsuits charging Wal-Mart with forcing employees to work without pay
through lunch and rest breaks, and several lawyers and former employees
who have sued Wal-Mart said the audit only bolstered their cases.
They said that many employees continued to complain of missing meals
and breaks.
"Their own analysis confirms that they have a pattern and practice of
making their employees work through their breaks and lunch on a regular
basis," said James Finberg, a lawyer who has assisted several suits
against Wal-Mart. "What this audit shows is against their own company
policy and against the law in almost every state in which they operate."
Several lawyers who sued Wal-Mart also noted that over the years
Wal-Mart ordered it employees to make sure to clock out when they took
lunch and breaks.
And John Fraser, who ran the Federal Labor Department’s wage and hour
division during the 1900's called the sheer volume of apparent
violations surprising and troubling. "When you find the frequency of
this kind of violation in such a large employer, such a pervasive
employer, it has to be a source of great concern," Mr. Fraser said.
The audit was conducted in July 2000;, a copy was given to the New
York Times by a longtime Wal-Mart critic hoping to pressure the company
to improve working conditions. Wal-Mart has asked various courts to seal
the audit for the last two years-and they have compiled- ever since the
company gave copies to lawyers who accused it making employees work off
the clock.
The audit, written by Bret Shipley, a Wal-Mart auditor, indicated
that time-clock records for thousands of workers showed tens of
thousands of missed lunches and breaks.
Ms. Williams said employees had probably taken their lunches and
breaks but just failed to record them.
She and other Wal-Mart officials also asserted that time-clock
records could have been wrong in indicating that minors had worked
illegally during school hours. Schools might have been closed on a given
weekday, they noted. "The audit that Shipley pulled together doesn’t
reflect actual behavior within the facilities, " Ms. Williams said.
Wal-Mart officials, she said, always tried to comply with the law and
repeatedly told employees to take lunches and breaks. Wal-Mart policies
state that employees working seven or more hours a day are to receive a
meal break and two 15 minute rest breaks. Federal law does not require
lunch and meal breaks, but most states do for employees working seven or
more hours a day.
Several months after the Shipley audit was finished, Wal-Mart stopped
requiring employees to clock out and in for 15-minute breaks. Wal-Mart
officials said they eliminated this requirement for their employee’s
convenience, but Fran Azar, a lawyer involved in the off-the-lock suits,
said Wal-Mart did this to make sure no paper trail could show that
employees were not taking breaks.
The audit warned that its findings could hurt the company. "Wal-Mart
may face several adverse consequences as a result of staffing and
scheduling not being prepared appropriately, "it stated.
Commissioned to help Wal-Mart executives determine whether employees
were taking their meals and breaks, the audit came as the company was
facing several lawsuits accusing it of off-the-clock work and failing to
give breaks.
Ms. Williams said that company auditors more senior than Mr. Shipley
had determined that the methodology he used was flawed. "This audit is
so flawed and invalid that we did not respond to it in any way
internally," she said.
But several current and former Wal-Mart employees confirmed in
interviews that violations of state law on child labor and breaks were a
recurring problem at many understaffed Wal-Mart stores.
Leila Najjar said that when she worked for a Wal-Mart in a Denver
suburb at age 16 and 17, she sometimes was forced to miss breaks, work
past midnight and work more than eight hours a day even though Colorado
bars minors from doing that. Time records from a court case showed that
her store sometimes forced her to work illegal hours.
During the holidays, Ms. Najjar, a recent graduate of the University
of Colorado, recalled "the store closed at 11 and there were nights we
had to stay and clean up until 12:30, 12:45. It was a long day, and I
was tired the next day at school. And sometimes, I’d have to work 10, 11
hours on a Saturday or Sunday."
If the same rate of violations were found throughout the Wal-Mart
system, that would translate into tens of thousands of child-labor
violations each week at Wal-Mart’s 3,500 stores and more than one
million violations of company and state regulations on meals and breaks.
Company officials said such extrapolations were misleading, noting
that many of the seeming time record problems could be explained by
legal behavior.
Wal-Mart employees clock in and out by swiping their identity badges,
which the time clock read electronically. Ms. Williams said employees
sometimes forgot to swipe when they arrived at work or when they took
lunch. Sometimes, she said, workers missed breaks not because management
pressured them but, for example, because they wanted to finish early to
take a child to the doctor.
John Lehman, who ran several Wal-Mart stores in Kentucky, said he was
sure that large scale violations on child labor, breaks and meals
continued at Wal-Mart. In the months after the company distributed the
audit internally, he said, store managers like him received no word to
try harder to prevent violations.
"There was no follow-up to that audit, there was nothing sent out I
was aware of saying, ‘We’re bad. We screwed up. This is the remedy we’re
going to follow to correct the situation.’‘ said Mr. Lehman, who said he
quit in 2001 because he was disgusted with the company’s treatment of
employees. He now works for a union trying to organize Wal-Mart workers.
"Wal-Mart stores are so systematically understaffed that they work
minors just like they do adults," he said. "They don’t have enough
workers to take care of the business. Yes their prices are low but then
the stores are so understaffed that workers often don’t have time to
take their breaks or lunches.
Maria Rocha, who ran the restaurant inside a Wal-Mart in Dallas, said
her workload was so great and the restaurant was so understaffed that
she never took breaks or often missed lunch. "It was just too busy to
take a break," said Ms. Rocha, who quit in October. "There were a lot of
customers, and the managers would be mad if you took a break."
Verette Richardson, a former Wal-Mart cashier in Kansas City, Mo.,
said it was sometimes so hard to get a break that some cashiers urinated
on themselves. Bella Blaubergs, a diabetic who worked at a Wal-Mart in
Washington State, said she sometimes nearly fainted from low blood sugar
because managers often would not give breaks.
As for claims of child-labor violations an stores too understaffed
for worker breaks, Ms. Williams said, "In a company that has more than 1
million people in the U.S. alone, I have no doubt that in some
individual instances that can happen."
