Victory Over Wal-Mart for Overtimers

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Mother Jones has always been hot on the Wal-Mart beat. In November of last year, when San Diego banned Wal-Mart Supercenters, I summarized on MoJoBlog.

Mother Jones has written a ton about Wal-Mart in the past, including this feature on Wal-Mart employees being so fed up with low wages, unpaid overtime, and union busting that they started fighting back, this blog post about how Wal-Mart’s claims about going organic are a big fat lie, this blog post about how Wal-Mart could raise wages by more than $2,000 per employee and still maintain profit margins almost 50 percent higher than Costco, this short article about how Rick Santorum sided with Wal-Mart over his own beleaguered constituents, this essay about how Wal-Mart’s “Made in America” claims are deceitful and disgusting, and on and on.

Today, a new addition. Wal-Mart has agreed to settle a case in which 87,000 employees sued for unpaid overtime wages. Specifically, Wal-Mart has agreed to pay $33 million, which averages out to be $379 per employee involved. Hilariously, though, the damages paid to each employee range from a few cents to, in one instance, $39,000.

If you are a Wal-Mart employee and are wondering if you are due any unpaid overtime, you can go here to find out.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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