THROWING THE BOOK AT CORPORATIONS: TYSON
FOODS, WAL-MART, BP HIT WITH BIG JUDGMENTS
WASHINGTON (PAI)--The week from Oct. 30 through Nov. 5 saw multi-million-dollar verdicts against three corporate malefactors: Tyson Foods and British Petroleum got hit with big judgments for wage and hour and worker health and safety violations, and Wal-Mart agreed to millions in back pay for stiffing thousands of its workers.
The first verdict came from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). It did a follow-up 6-month-long inspection of BP’s Texas City, Texas, refinery -- where 15 workers died and 170 people were hurt in a 2005 explosion -- and did not like what it found. BP’s still breaking numerous safety and health rules, OSHA said.
On top of the $21 million fine OSHA levied against BP after the fatal blast, which BP paid, the federal agency said on Oct. 30 that it would fine the oil giant another $87.4 million. Both sums are records. BP said it would appeal the second fine.
The second shoe dropped Nov. 2 when Wal-Mart agreed to settle a class-action suit over its wage and hour violations in 29 states and Puerto Rico. It told a federal judge in Nevada it would pay thousands of workers between $65 million and $85 million combined, depending on claims to be filed by Nov. 9.
The settlement is part of a series of Wal-Mart payments nationwide over years, totaling $640 million, for underpaying its workers or forcing them to toil off the clock.
The third verdict was the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division win on Nov. 5, against Tyson in federal district court in Birmingham, Ala. Jurors found the giant poultry processor guilty of cheating workers of pay for the time they spent putting on and taking off protective equipment -- heavy gloves, steel aprons and the like -- in its Albertville, Ala., plant, from 2000 through now.
DOL didn’t have a figure for how much pay the 3,000 Albertville workers, all Hispanic-named, lost. But a study by the University of Wisconsin midway through the case, five years ago, calculated they could be short as much as $600 million in wages.
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis hailed the OSHA fine against BP and her Wage and Hour Division’s win against Tyson in the Alabama court. DOL’s case followed an unsuccessful lawsuit against Tyson on the same issue, last decade, by the United Food and Commercial Workers. UFCW lost in Kentucky courts.
Kim Bobo of Interfaith Worker Justice, author of a recent comprehensive book on wage theft nationwide, was elated by the Tyson case’s outcome.
“It really is good that we finally have a Labor Department that is really going to pursue cases,” Bobo told Press Associates Union News Service. “We pushed DOL years ago to do investigations of the poultry industry. It’s a great victory for the workers -- and it’ll send a signal to poultry and meat processors nationwide.”
DOL’s investigation of Tyson actually began in 2000, in the waning days of the Democratic Clinton administration, but the trial -- the second of two -- did not occur until 2009. The first trial of Tyson, earlier this year in the same court, ended with a hung jury.
“We are very pleased the jury in Birmingham vindicated our position that employers must pay their workers for the time they are required to work,” said Labor Secretary Hilda Solis in a prepared statement. “This is a victory for workers, and the result of years of dedicated efforts to protecting the rights of working Americans on the part of attorneys, investigators and others within the Labor Department.”
She said both the Tyson and BP cases showed her department’s new commitment to protecting workers and their families.
"When BP signed the OSHA settlement from the March 2005 explosion, it agreed to comprehensive action to protect employees. Instead of living up to that commitment, BP allowed hundreds of potential hazards to continue unabated," Solis added. OSHA found 270 cases at Texas City where BP let violations go unrepaired, and another 439 new willful violations by BP “for failure to follow industry-accepted controls” at the plant.
"An $87 million fine won't restore those lives” lost in the 2005 Texas City blast, Solis added. “But we can't let this happen again. Workplace safety is more than a slogan. It's the law. The Department of Labor will not tolerate the preventable exposure of workers to hazardous conditions."
In Wal-Mart’s case, federal Judge Philip M. Pro in Nevada called the settlement “fair, reasonable and adequate.” Pro added it was “a hard-fought compromise of claims actively litigated before this court” starting in early 2006.
The class-action suits by the states, including Nevada, California, Alabama, Michigan, Maryland, Oregon and Texas, said the retail monster broke wage and hour laws by denying workers rest breaks and by shaving their pay. Lead attorney Robert Bonsignore hired experts who found law-breaking began no later than 2005. Experts found 7,000 examples in a 1-year era where Wal-Mart managers deleted large blocks of time from employees’ payroll records. Bonsignore said Wal-Mart committed “time theft” from its own workers by manipulating its computer, which keeps its payroll data. ###
