Posted on: Saturday, March 19, 2005
Wal-Mart fined $11M in illegal-workers case
By Chuck Bartels
Associated Press
LITTLE ROCK — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. escaped criminal charges but agreed yesterday to pay $11 million, a record fine in a civil immigration case, to end a federal probe into its use of illegal immigrants to clean floors at stores in 21 states.
A dozen contractors who actually hired the laborers for work inside stores for the world's largest retailer agreed to plead guilty to criminal immigration charges and together pay an additional $4 million in fines.
"This case breaks new ground not only because this is a record dollar amount for a civil immigration settlement, but because this settlement requires Wal-Mart to create an internal program to ensure future compliance with immigration laws by Wal-Mart contractors and by Wal-Mart itself," said Michael J. Garcia, assistant secretary for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Wal-Mart received a target letter from a grand jury in Pennsylvania and was the subject of an October 2003 raid spanning 21 states and 60 stores. The raids led to the arrest of 245 allegedly illegal immigrants.
Wal-Mart, which has 1.2 million domestic workers, had pledged its cooperation in the investigation.
"We are satisfied that this is being settled as a civil matter," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Mona Williams told The Associated Press from the company's Bentonville headquarters. "Despite a long, thorough and high-profile investigation, the government has not charged anyone at Wal-Mart with wrongdoing."
Williams said no executives or mid-level managers knew the contractors had hired illegal immigrants, a statement reflected in the consent decree.
Workers picked up in the October raids came from 18 different nations, including 90 from Mexico, 35 from the Czech Republic, 22 from Mongolia and 20 from Brazil, officials said. In all, two separate investigations resulted in arrests of 352 illegal immigrants contracted as janitors at Wal-Mart stores. Lawyers for some of the workers claim they worked as many as seven days a week, were not paid overtime and did not receive injury compensation.
An employer can face civil and criminal penalties for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants or failing to comply with certain employee record-keeping regulations.
States in which the raids occurred include: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Wal-Mart Stores had sales last year of $288.19 billion.
