No Meal Breaks for Staff Costs Wal-mart $207m Penalty

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer and the second largest company in the world, was ordered yesterday to pay $207m (£119m) in damages to thousands of employees who claimed they were denied lunch breaks. The ruling, made by a jury in Oakland, grants damages to 116,000 current and former employees in California.

The retailer was ordered to pay $57m in general damages and $150m in punitive damages. It was claimed that it had failed to grant employees working more than six hours a 30-minute unpaid lunch break. Lawyers for the employees argued that Wal-Mart deliberately under-staffed stores and denied workers meal breaks.

The company, based in Arkansas, made a $10bn profit last year. Its British subsidiary, Asda, has 282 stores in the UK, and is the second largest chain after Tesco.

Wal-Mart attracted opprobrium in October when it emerged that in order to reduce health care costs for its workers a company memo recommended hiring younger workers. It also proposed hiring part-time staff who would not be eligible for benefits and noted that a long-term employee earned more but was not necessarily more productive than a new one.