One of the biggest issues Wal-Mart has been facing the last several years is the myriad of lawsuits across the country over wages, overtime, and breaks. Wal-Mart had been systematically forcing employees to work through breaks, altering time cards, denying overtime pay, and generally cheating workers. It faced more than seventy class action lawsuits from employees. Now Wal-Mart has recently settled 63 of these cases and will pay at least $352 million to the workers they stole from. Of course Wal-Mart being Wal-Mart, they announced this two days before Christmas in hopes that the media wouldn't pay much attention. It seemed to work. In the past, when Wal-Mart has settled a single case, there are typically 6 or 7 stories, wire pieces, and considerable blog buzz. This time around, when they settled not one, but 63 cases? SO far we've seen a New York Times story and that's about it.

We're not letting it slip by, however. This is a big deal. And we think it's suspicious that Wal-Mart has settled for so little. $352 million for 63 cases? That's about $5.6 million per case. When Wal-Mart settled a single case in Minnesota in December, they paid out more than $54 million. A court in Pennsylvania upheld a jury's verdict that Wal-Mart owed up to $186 million.

Here's the article from the New York Times:

Wal-Mart Settles 63 Lawsuits Over Wages

Wal-Mart said on Tuesday that it would pay at least $352 million, and possibly far more, to settle lawsuits across the country claiming that it forced employees to work off the clock. Several lawyers described it as the largest settlement ever for lawsuits over wage violations.

After years of being embarrassed by lawsuits over its wage practices, the company agreed to settle 63 cases pending in federal and state courts in 42 states.

The workers and their lawyers will receive at least $352 million, and the payments could reach $640 million, depending on how many claims affected workers submit.

Union critics of Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, saw the settlement as proof of their view that the company achieves its low prices in part by cheating workers. But the company rejected that characterization, saying it had already corrected wage practices that it has long attributed to local managers acting without authority.