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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.”