Nine Immigrants Arrested in Raid File Lawsuit Against Wal-Mart
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: November 9, 2003
Nine Mexican immigrants who worked as janitors at Wal-Marts in New Jersey sued the company on Wednesday, accusing Wal-Mart and its cleaning contractors of failing to pay overtime, withhold taxes and make required workers' compensation contributions.
The plaintiffs, who face deportation for being in the country illegally, also accuse Wal-Mart and its contractors of discriminating against them by giving them lower wages and fewer benefits than other workers because of their national origin.
The nine Mexicans were among 250 people arrested in an Oct. 23 federal immigration raid on 60 Wal-Mart stores in 21 states.
The lawsuit, the first filed by immigrants arrested in the raid, said Wal-Mart should be held accountable for its contractors' wage and hour violations.
The plaintiffs have asked Wal-Mart and its contractors to pay more than $200,000 in back pay they say they are owed for overtime. The nine say they worked seven days a week, at least 56 hours a week, and were not paid time and a half for overtime hours, those over 40 a week. The immigrants say they were paid $350 to $500 a week.
The lawsuit said that Wal-Mart, "knowingly and with the intention to defraud the United States government and the plaintiffs and in order to save money on cleaning service contract contractors," employed certain cleaning contractors, "with full knowledge" that these contractors would pay the illegal immigrants far less than they would have paid legal workers.
"Wal-Mart must have known about these violations," said Gilberto Garcia, the immigrants' lawyer, who filed the lawsuit on Wednesday in Monmouth County Superior Court in Freehold, N.J. "If these people are going to work at Wal-Marts, then Wal-Mart and its contractors should abide by the labor laws."
Mona Williams, vice president of Wal-Mart for communications, said on Wednesday that Wal-Mart did not know its contractors and subcontractors used illegal immigrants. She also said Wal-Mart did not know about the overtime and other labor violations of which the cleaning contractors are accused.
"Clearly, hungry lawyers are converging on these illegal immigrants as if they were accident victims," Ms. Williams said. "We have seen absolutely no evidence showing that Wal-Mart did anything wrong."
On Tuesday, Ms. Williams acknowledged that federal prosecutors had sent Wal-Mart a letter warning that it faced a grand jury investigation about illegal immigrants employed in its stores.
Ms. Williams said Wal-Mart was not liable for the misdeeds alleged against its contractors, noting that Wal-Mart has long insisted that its contractors obey the law. "If you are scrambling to make a buck at someone else's expense, who would you sue, an unknown cleaning contractor or the country's largest corporation?" she asked.
The lawsuit says the managers at two Wal-Marts where the plaintiffs worked, in Old Bridge and Piscataway, N.J., knew that the workers were illegal immigrants.
Well it didn't take long for the vultures [lawyers] to try to cash in.
I agree that if Walmart or any corporation is guilty of wrong doing they should pay. But they should pay in the form of fines not to the aliens. They should not be able to profit from their criminality. The have in effect stolen jobs from American citizens by working for these low wages and slave like conditions. In effect they are as guilty as the corporations
au1929 wrote: In effect they are as guilty as the corporations
You mean, murdered people should get the death penalty as well?
Walter
No I mean the guilty people should not benifit from a crime that they themselves were part and parcel of.
Chicano referes specifically to a Mexican-American, i.e. an American of Mexican ethnicity.
A Mexican isn't a Chicano.
Also, for some Mexican-Americans the word Chicano suggests ethnic pride, for other Mexican-Americans it is felt to be derogatory.
If you don't know, you'd be wiser to not use the word at all.
Au,
These workers deserve fair compensation for work that they did. Wal-mart entered into a contract of employment with these workers. As such Wal-mart has a legal obligation to provide benefits.
This has nothing to do with any immigration violoation which is between them and the government.
Don't let your dislike of immigrants get in the way of your alleged respect for the law.
So, braking the law doesn't qualify one as a criminal?
Criminal has rights too. That is why in California when an illegal alien is reported to the police, the police does not act on it but refers the person reporting to the INS because they have the jurusdiction on it.
This is done to encourage illegal aliens to report crimes committed against them or crimes they have witnessed to the police without fear of being deported. I agree very much on this policy.
The illegal aliens having experienced abuse from their employers should be compensated for it. The employers aside from paying what is due should also be penalized by fines or imprisonment or both.
Yeah, one's a criminal for loitering where it is expressly forbidden, jaywalking, speeding, California-stopping, tax evasion, fraud, extortion, racketeering, murdering, terrorizing, and illegally immigrating.
The truth of the matter of immigration, legal or otherwise, though, is that it is a highly complex social phenomenon, and simplistic laws utterly fail to address the issues thereof, to the point that executive departments and institutions themselves pay lip service to these obtuse laws.
InfraBlue
What is so complex about immigration laws. This is the border and you may not cross it without authorization. If you do you have committed a criminal act and are in violation of the laws of the US. Nothing complex there you don't need a college education to understand.
Regarding those who are suing. They knew full well that they were being exploited and indeed were taking jobs from people legally in the US by working for slave wages and under those conditions.
JoeN, i'm sure it still goes on here in Ohio, as well--but the crack down which resulted unexpectedly from the effort to collect child support had a host of unintended and unexpected consequences. One difference is that there isn't much incentive for the politicos here to protect anyone who is cheating. My guess, right off hand, is that in Nuevo York, those who might be considered responsible for ending abuses would be the objects of attempts at grafting. If there are sufficient bucks in the kinds of situations you describe, it is more than likely that that is exactly what is going on. This is not to say that i consider New York (where i was born) more corrupt than Ohio. One has to consider motive and opportunity.
I was surprised during my trip to NYC to see that it is still a very cash based economy. My guess is, it would be easier to get away with an underground business there than in most places in the US.
Ceili
I don't exactly know what you mean by a cash based economy. However, I doubt it is different from any large or medium sized city in the US
I was surprised at the number of restaurants, stores ect that didn't have debit machines and made it known they had a preference of cash over credit cards. Several restaurants charged extra when/if we decided to use cards. I was surprised at the low number of bank machines. I live in a city where everything is wired, bank machines are everywhere and you can't find a restaurant without both a debit machine and acceptance of all credit cards.
This was three years ago, but I had expected NYC to be on the cutting edge of technology and again, I was surprised that it wasn't.
I'm a native of New York, and although i have lived most of my life elsewhere, i've always been comfortable there, and fit right in whenever i'm in town. All which relates to Ceili is saying: it is my experience that New Yorkers in many areas prefer a cash economy, and especially in bars and restaurants. A friend who has a produce business with some of his high school buddies gets paid cash on all of his invoices, and is routinely offered an extra $50 or $100 to pad the invoice. Bars pay for licquor deliveries in cash--the upshot for any business is that this does not leave a paper trail, or it can provide a manipulable paper trail.
Celi
Somehow my wife never has a problem in finding a store where credit cards are accepted. In particular a store that sells women's clothes.
That aside any reputable store will accept a credit card. In fact all our large purchases are alway made through the use of a credit card.
I should add there are occasions when if you know the shopkeeper if you pay cash you can get away without paying the tax. And so obviously can the shopkeeper.
au, man sometimes you do get your knickers in a twist.
I loved NY big time, I just noticed it was different from my hometown. Businesses here couldn't get away with practicing in the same manner. I live in a cashless society, we are the most wired city in north america, first to be completely wired with fibre optics, fast cable internet ect. I'm not bragging, I think I would prefer New York system, but it ain't up to me.
au,
I am saying that immigration is a complex social phenomenon, and that US immigration laws are simplistic and obtuse. ¿Comprendes?
InfraBlue,
Unlawful use of non-English in an American site. Shame on you!
What's this country coming to?
Wal-Mart Faces Class-Action Suit
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: November 11, 2003
[]awyers filed a class-action suit against Wal-Mart yesterday in New Jersey, saying it violated federal racketeering laws by conspiring with cleaning contractors to cheat immigrant janitors out of wages.
The suit, in Federal District Court in Newark, seeks to represent thousands of workers who washed and waxed floors nightly in Wal-Mart department stores. It says the company and its contractors violated RICO, the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act, by conspiring not to pay the workers overtime. The suit says the cleaners at hundreds of stores generally earned $325 to $500 for working seven nights a week, usually for 56 hours or more each week.
Did I miss something where is the governments action related to the illegality of hireing undocumented aliens. THe best way to solve the undocumented alien problem in the US is to make it very painful for those that hire them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/11/national/11WALM.html?th
