Wal-Mart to pay up in wage suit

Sometimes justice takes a long time coming. When a corporation breaks basic labor laws, you can't always expect a remedy to come quickly, because Bush & Co. isn't too reliable on enforcing the laws.

A class action suit says Wal-Mart and Sam's Club locations in Minnesota deprived workers of wages and breaks back in 1998. The retailer forced employees to work off the clock and refused to give workers rest breaks they were owed.

Well, eventually the bottom had to drop out, I guess - and now Wal-Mart has to pay over $54,000,000 to settle the suit.

Wal-Mart could have faced over $2,000,000,000 in fines for thumbing its nose at state wage laws. (It had over 2,000,000 violations, carrying fines of $1,000 each.)

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart is also now the target of a lawsuit by customers injured in the post-Thanksgiving stampede that left an employee dead in Long Island.

(Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE4B84ML20081209;
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/12/02/walmart.trampling.suit/?iref=mpstoryview)