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Court Rules Walmart Must Pay Up for Inadequately Compensating Workers

Please pay me right.

Photo by J.D. Pooley/Getty Images

A week after a National Labor Relations Board judge ruled that a Walmart manager in California could not legally threaten to “shoot the union,” a Pennsylvania court handed down another decision against the mega-retailer. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled on Monday that Walmart must pony up $188 million to employees whom it failed to compensate properly during breaks and total hours worked.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld a 2007 judgment in favor of the workers. It affects roughly 187,000 people who were employed at Walmart between 1998 and 2006, and is expected to take a chunk out of Walmart’s earnings for the current quarter, according to Reuters:

Monday’s ruling on the class-action lawsuit will reduce Wal-Mart’s earnings for the quarter ending on Jan. 31 by 6 cents a share, the company said in a securities filing. That amounts to roughly 4 percent of its profit forecast of $1.46 to $1.56 for the period.

On Tuesday, Walmart said it might appeal the court’s decision. “We disagree with the decision, and continue to believe that these claims should not be bundled together into a class-action lawsuit,” the company said in a statement on Monday. Walmart also said last week that it disagreed with parts of the NLRB judge’s decision, and planned to appeal them.