In a statement, Wal-Mart said it disagreed with the judge's and jury's decisions in the case. "It is our policy to pay every associate for every hour worked," spokeswoman Sharon Weber said.
"Many employees testified that they skipped or cut short their rest breaks by their own choice," Weber said. "While we discourage this practice, an employer should not be penalized when employees do this on their own."
Last October, the jury found that Wal-Mart did not compensate workers for time they had worked without pay and for missed breaks, and that the company had no good reason for this. The jury found that Wal-Mart had saved more than $49 million by not paying workers properly. "The jury found the defendant Wal-Mart abused their workers" in a way that can be remedied by the Pennsylvania Wage Payment and Collection Law, the judge wrote in his opinion.
The class in the case numbers 187,000 workers and covers pay missed between March 1998 and May 2006. The $62.3 million extra applies to 124,506 workers employed between January 2002 and May 2006, while the statute of limitations was still in effect.
Wal-Mart said it now employs 51,497 people in Pennsylvania, about 6,550 of them in Philadelphia and its Pennsylvania suburbs. There are 145 Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores in the state.
In his 12-page opinion, Bernstein stressed the importance of compensating workers for their time.
"The law in its majesty applies equally to highly paid executives and minimum-wage clerks," he wrote. "Just as highly paid executives' promised equity interests . . . are protected fringe benefits and wage supplements . . ., so too [are] the monetary equivalents of 'paid break' time cashiers and other employees were prohibited from taking."
