Walmart has agreed to pay a $2.5 million settlement to end an Arizona class-action lawsuit centered around its COVID-19 policies for employees.
The retail giant was accused of violating Arizona wage laws, Arizona record-keeping regulations and unjust enrichment. According to the original complaint from lead plaintiffs Kathy Arrison and Tristan Smith, who both worked for Walmart in 2020, the company failed to pay employees for time spent completing mandatory COVID-19 screenings prior to their shifts.
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According to Arrison and Smith, Walmart required its employees to pass a “physical and medical examination to check for symptoms of COVID-19 each shift.”
The complaint said employees would have their temperatures checked, then be asked questions about their physical health, travel history, potential exposures and more. Upon finishing the screening, which Arrison and Smith alleged took, on average, 10 to 15 minutes, employees could enter the store to clock in for their shifts.
According to the complaint, “Walmart’s managers and supervisors instructed their employees…to arrive several minutes prior to their scheduled shift in order to have enough time to wait in line, complete the required screening, enter the story and still clock in at or just before the employees’ scheduled shift.”
Arrison and Smith further alleged that employees who did not clock in on time, regardless of the screening requirement, “were subjected to, and received, discipline under Walmart’s attendance policy.”
Given that the screenings occurred on Walmart’s property and were mandated by the company, the employees alleged they “were subject to the control of Walmart,” which prevented employees from using the time they spent waiting for screenings for personal tasks or purposes.
That, they said, meant they should have been compensated for the time they spent waiting in line and subsequently completing the screenings. Arrison and Smith did concede that in November 2020, several months after the screenings began, Walmart started tacking five minutes on to each employee’s daily timecard to account for time spent in screenings.
However, they argued that, due to the actual amount of time spent in screenings, “this five-minute addition is insufficient to fully compensate the affected Walmart employees for the time actually spent in the COVID-19 screenings.”
They went on to note that, allegedly, Walmart failed to reimburse employees for any screenings that occurred prior to November 2020.
After some legal back and forth, the two parties settled the case. The settlement terms received final approval from a judge on July 15.
According to the final paperwork, the settlement will cover approximately 81,000 employees who worked in Walmarts across Arizona.
In the settlement approval, the judge said, “This [settlement] amount reflects ‘an average recovery of approximately 50 percent of each plaintiff’s potential post-summary judgment claim.’ The settlement fund will be distributed to class members based on the number of weeks they worked during the class period. Moreover, no funds will revert to [Walmart]. Instead, any remaining funds will be redistributed to class members.”
Walmart did not immediately respond to Sourcing Journal’s request for comment on the settlement.
Over the course of the past several months, Walmart has faced several instances of scrutiny over its labor practices. It was named to the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH)’s “Dirty Dozen” list earlier this year. The organization highlighted what it considers unsafe working practices and lack of care for employees’ wellbeing going on inside Walmart.
Activist group Oxfam also called out Walmart, and its competitor Amazon, earlier this year for “excessive” workplace surveillance that it alleged negatively impacted workers’ rights.
Employees, too, have started to call for change. One employee submitted a shareholders’ proposal this year, asking the company to conduct a third-party review of its workplace safety practices, including its policies on gun violence. Ultimately, the proposal did not receive a majority of shareholders’ votes; Walmart had advised shareholders to vote against it.
