Another disabled Wal-Mart victim gets justice

“After beating all the odds -- surviving my injury when not expected to survive, walking again when told that I would never walk again, and returning to work where I received excellent performance evaluations and consistent merit increases -- I was devastated to have the rug pulled out from underneath me simply because Wal-Mart could ‘no longer accommodate my handicap needs.’ I am hopeful that this settlement will make Wal-Mart take a closer look at its policies and practices with respect to the employment of individuals with disabilities so that what happened to me will not happen to someone else.”- Glenda D. Allen, fired from Wal-Mart

From the ABA Journal - Law News Now (6/10/08):

Wal-Mart to Pay $250K Settlement for Firing Worker Disabled in Shooting
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Wal-Mart will pay $250,000 to settle a claim that it violated federal disability law when it fired a pharmacy technician who was injured in a shooting.

The employee, Glenda Allen, was working at Wal-Mart in Maryland in 1994 when she was shot in a robbery attempt at a different job, according to a press release issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. After the shooting she had to walk with a cane.

Allen continued working as a Wal-Mart pharmacy technician until she got a new manager who refused to accommodate her injuries, the Baltimore Sun reports. The company told Allen in 2003 that she was being demoted to a door greeter, said Allen’s lawyer, Maria Salacuse. Allen refused the demotion and was fired.

Wal-Mart settled the suit filed by the EEOC after a Baltimore federal judge refused the company’s motion to dismiss the case. The settlement is the second time that Wal-Mart has settled an EEOC case this year based on violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

From the Press Release from The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission - slightly edited in abridged form (6/9/08):

“When an employer is faced with an employee who has difficulty performing certain tasks because of his or her disability, it cannot sit back passively and then turn around and fire the employee because of its own failure to accommodate,” said EEOC Regional Attorney Jacqueline McNair. “Federal law mandates that employers engage in a good-faith interactive dialogue with the qualified disabled employee to identify potential reasonable accommodations.”

This is the EEOC’s second settlement this year with Wal-Mart concerning the ADA. In April 2008, the EEOC settled a lawsuit concerning Wal-Mart’s failure to hire an individual with cerebral palsy in Richmond, Mo., for $300,000 and injunctive relief. According to its web site(Wal-Mart) , “Today, 7,357 Wal-Mart stores and Sam’s Club locations in 14 markets employ more than 2 million associates, serving more than 179 million customers a year.”

During Fiscal Year 2007, disability discrimination charges filed with the EEOC under the ADA increased 14% to 17,734 -- the highest level in a decade. Approximately one out of every five private sector charge filings with the EEOC contains an allegation of disability discrimination.

Justice has been served

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Caving in to the publicity, Wal-Mart drops suit against disabled former worker Deborah Shank

Wal-Mart caves in to bad publicity

This is a follow up to "Wal-Mart wins "Worst person in the world"" posted on 3/31/08, which detailed the case and was originally posted on the Change to Win WebBlog by Jason Lefkowitz on 3/27/08

From USA Today (4/01/08):

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is dropping a controversial effort to collect over $400,000 in health care reimbursement from a former employee who is confined to a southeast Missouri nursing home since she suffered brain damage in a traffic accident.

The world's largest retailer said Tuesday in a letter to the family of Deborah Shank it will not seek to collect money the Shanks won in an injury lawsuit against a trucking company for the accident.

Wal-Mart's top executive for human resources, Pat Curran, wrote that Shank's extraordinary situation had made the company re-examine its stance.

Deborah's husband Jim Shank welcomed the news. Family lawyer Maurice Graham of St. Louis said Wal-Mart deserves credit for doing the right thing.

"It's a good day for the Shank family," Jim Shank said in a statement.

Businessweek continues (4/1/08) :

Pat Curran, executive vice president for human resources at Wal-Mart Stores U.S., wrote that Shank's extraordinary situation had made the company re-examine its stance.

Deborah's husband Jim Shank welcomed the news. Family lawyer Maurice Graham of St. Louis said Wal-Mart deserves credit for doing the right thing.

"It's a good day for the Shank family," Jim Shank said in a statement.

Wal-Mart has been roundly criticized in newspaper editorials, on cable news shows and by its union foes for its claim to the funds, which it made in a lawsuit upheld by a federal appeals court.

Insurance experts say it is increasingly common for health plans to seek reimbursement for the medical expenses they paid for someone's treatment if the person also collects damages in an injury suit.

The practice, called "subrogation," has increased since a 2006 Supreme Court ruling that eased it.

Wal-Mart's Curran said the retailer was required by the rules of its plan to seek reimbursement from the Shank's settlement. But she said the case has made Wal-Mart revise those rules to allow for flexibility in individual cases.

"Occasionally others help us step back and look at a situation in a different way. This is one of those times," Curran wrote in the letter.

Shank, 52, lost much of her memory and ability to communicate or walk in a crash between her minivan and a tractor trailer in May 2000. Her family sued the trucking company and won $700,000. Court records show that after attorney's fees and costs, the remaining $417,477 from the settlement went into a trust to care for Shank.

The fund now has about $270,000, the family said.

Shanks' health insurance was through Wal-Mart, where she worked nights stocking shelves. After the Shanks won their lawsuit, Wal-Mart sued the Shank family to recover medical costs totaling about $470,000.

Wal-Mart won its case and subsequent appeals by the Shanks that went as far as the Supreme Court, which closed legal avenues this month by declining to hear the case.

During the case, the Shanks also lost one of their three sons when Jeremy, 18, was killed in Iraq last year while serving in the Army.

The case put a spotlight on the growing use of reimbursement claims by health plans, experts say.

Roger Baron, professor of law at the University of South Dakota and a specialist in health-plan law, said health plans have become "very aggressive" about subrogation since the 2006 Supreme Court decision.

"It's free money. They want the free money," Baron said.

Lynn Dudley, vice president for policy at the American Benefits Council in Washington D.C., said the negative publicity around the case was beginning to draw the attention of lawmakers who might want legislation to stop or limit subrogation.

"Capitol Hill is paying attention," Dudley said.

Baron said Wal-Mart's size -- it is the nation's largest nongovernment employer, with over 1.3 million workers -- means that its willingness to compromise in an individual case may have a wider impact on reimbursement practices by other health plans.

"I'm so pleased to see an element of reason because so much of this subrogation has been about just blindly going after the money," Baron said.

Capitol Hill should be paying attention.

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Wal-Mart wins "Worst person in the world"

From the Change to Win Blog (3/27/08):

So saith Keith Olbermann on his nightly news broadcast on MSNBC, Countdown:

The St. Louis Post Dispatch has more:

The family of a Missouri woman must reimburse Wal-Mart for nearly a half-million dollars in medical expenses now that the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review her case.

The court on Monday let stand a ruling by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis requiring Debbie Shank of Cape Girardeau County to pay nearly $470,000 to Wal-Mart.

The appeal was the last legal recourse for the family of the 52-year-old Shank, a mother of three who was critically injured in a car accident eight years ago. She suffered a brain injury that took her memory and left her with very little ability to move or communicate. She has lived in a nursing home since she was released from the hospital...

Her family later settled a lawsuit with the trucking company whose driver was involved in the accident. After attorneys' fees and expenses, $417,477 was put in a trust for Shank's care. That settlement money, plus $51,739 that Shank will have to pay out of pocket, must be paid to Wal-Mart.

Note to corporations: when even the raving socialists at the Wall Street Journal ask if you're overreaching, you're doing something wrong.

Note to everybody else: If you want to help the Shank family, you can make a donation via Wal-Mart Watch to help cover Deborah's medical expenses.

Posted by Jason Lefkowitz on March 27, 2008

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Target worker comes forward to tell how, like Wal-Mart,Target screws it's workers too.

image courtesy of www.corpwatch.org

Target (along with Wal-Mart) was recently found using a supplier who had little kids in China slaving in sweatshop conditions to make its store brand Christmas ornaments "Huh, I don't recall that story on the tube or in the papers", seems to be getting it's workers at it's warehouses a bit annoyed with it's unfair firing practices, anti-union actions, and the total neglect of it's workforce.

According to Red McKilldozer, who claims to be a Target warehouse worker, at Socialist Alternative website has made some claims, and judging by all the bullshit that we know happens daily at Wal-Mart and experiences I personally had working in a warehouse where injuries where "alleged" and the "workers fault", I don't see any reason to believe that Mr.McKilldozer is lying, even if he failed to use his real name to protect his job:

• Employees are routinely disciplined and fired for injuries. "Failure to be aware of surroundings" is a particularly favorite reason to discipline an injured worker. Target uses this practice to get rid of workers, especially those who receive top pay and benefits.
• A typical workday at a Target warehouse involves lifting 30,000 lbs. of freight over a ten-hour period. Yet management at the distribution center where I work refuses to acknowledge most hernias as job-related injuries.
• Any worker who attempts to use his or her right to organize is targeted by management for termination.the worker who attempts to organize is watched very closely for any infraction of the rules. Any violation, real or imagined, is blown out of proportion so the worker can be fired.
• Target will also fire the middle management of any distribution center that attempts to organize (this happened in New York recently). Thus, supervisors show great zeal in rooting out and eliminating union sympathizers.
• Every few weeks, “team members” and their bosses get together and talk. This gives the appearance of management and labor being in a partnership. In reality, this is a steam valve, a way to allow angry workers to blow off steam without actually addressing any real concerns.
  

Recently, this tactic has backfired. Over the last year, my warehouse has been subject to many changes made by management – making vacation hours harder to accrue, firing long-time workers for trivial reasons, changing shifts, and announcing mandatory overtime (they even forced almost everyone to work on Thanksgiving!).

A series of "roundtable" meetings with senior management was met with scorn, with nearly 50% of the workers refusing to even attend. Production slowdowns now occur on a regular basis. There is even talk of organizing a union among some workers.

Workers are sick and tired of being treated like animals, subject to an authoritarian dictatorship in the workplace where management can fire us for bullshit reasons without explanation if we have a big mouth and dare to speak up against them, while they beam Fox News into the break rooms to distract us. But the situation at my warehouse does demonstrate that class struggle is a daily event, and takes place even in the most mundane of workplaces.
Full Story

Sounds like a reasonable account to me, anyone out there care to help get more info to me post away. As of now I'm unfortunately going to have to put this entire article, aside from Targets irresponsibility in choosing it's Christmas ornament manufacturer, into the "alleged" category.

Heres one related link I found so far:

CorpWatch.org - Target: Wal-Mart Lite

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CVS : Building with substandard wages and found guilty of youth violations in 6 states at 43 locations

CVS is the big box drug store, who's developer has been using nonunion workers with substandard wages here in New York, has been found violating wage and young worker provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 43 stores, out of only 63 investigated in six different northeast states.

The company routinely altered time cards, failed to pay wages for hours worked, allowed 78 minor employees to work in a hazardous environment and let 7 minors work longer hours than the law allows.

CVS, you get none of my hard earned wages.

The stores were in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Pennsylvania. CVS will pay fines to the US Dept. Of Labor in the ammount of $215,378 for youth employment violations and $11,220 for wage violation. CVS will also pay more than $38,000 in back wages.

Think of how many of those stores just opened, can you imagine their view on working stiffs like the rest of us. CVS is no good to the working person. Shame on them.

Source for Child labor infractions - Mike Hall at AFL-CIO WebBlog

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