Company News : Overtime violations cost Wal-Mart $33 million

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will pay more than $33 million in back wages to thousands of employees after turning itself in to the Labor Department for paying too little in overtime over the past five years, according to an agreement announced Thursday by the U.S. Labor Department.

Wal-Mart said the department’s review of its overtime calculations also found it had overpaid about 215,000 hourly workers during the same five-year period. The company said it will not seek to recover any overpayments, which were at least $20 per worker.

Steven Mandel, associate solicitor in the Labor Department’s Fair Labor Standards Division, said the case — involving nearly 87,000 employees — resulted from Wal-Mart coming to the department in early 2005 and asking for a review of its overtime calculations.

“They had some concern that some of the practices were not in compliance” with federal wage laws, he told a conference call for reporters

“It’s not particularly unusual for an employer to come to us and talk to us about potential payroll violations,” Mandel said.

But Mandel said the overtime settlement was one of the largest ever reached by the department’s wage and hour division.

Wal-Mart said the settlement includes no fines or penalties and that it has adopted measures to prevent the errors from occurring again.

“The fact of the matter is we discovered this matter, we reported it to the Department of Labor and we resolved the issue,” Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley said.

“ Bayer Corp. has agreed to pay a total of $8 million for failing to adequately disclose safety risks associated with a cholesterol-lowering drug called Baycol.

The judgment, filed Tuesday in King County Superior Court, requires Bayer pay 30 states a total of $8 million for failing to adequately warn health-care professionals and consumers that Baycol carried a significantly higher risk of inducing muscular conditions than other statin drugs. Washington state should receive $200,000 of that amount.

The conditions include myopathy, weakening of the muscles, and rhabdomyolysis, a more serious muscular disease.

Although Bayer told the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about the adverse effects, the attorneys general say the company failed to warn prescribing health care professionals and consumers about the higher risks associated with Baycol.