Half hour a day wasted going through security at work and not paid

[Jimzz]

So, all the employees have to do is say, "I dispense of this security check" and walk out, because it's not an intrinsic element of the job. No problem, except for the fact that people have no pride, and will bow their heads and comply.

That's what the courts are saying. In this case the people sued for the time but were not fired or said no.

What they have to do is say no and if they are fired for that reason then they go back and say they were told it was not a intrinsic element of the job, and the company even argued that in court, but when they did not do it they were fired as it was part of the job.
But even then depending on how they are fired it may not hold up. i.e. you don't want to hire blacks you say they were not hire because of a different reason type thing.

 

[PokerGuy]

That is quite literally, exactly what it means. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intrinsic

Again, no. By your logic, having diploma or certification would be an intrinsic element of a job if that certification was a prerequisite of the job. That's just not the case. A requirement for being able to do the job is not the same as an intrinsic element of the job itself.

If the job cannot be performed without something, that something is essential to the job. As far as Amazon has defined this job, it cannot be performed without this screening, thus it is an intrinsic aspect of the job.

You are throwing around terms haphazardly. Just because something is "essential" to the job does not mean it meets the legal definition of being an "intrinsic element" to the job. Read the ruling to understand the distinction.

The logic you seem to be implying is that anything not directly related to the final work product of a task is not intrinsic and thus deserves no pay. With this I could argue that HR departments shouldn't be paid

What are you talking about? The company pays someone in the HR department to do a certain job. The do the job, they get paid. I'm not sure what leap of logic brings you to that one.

Case in point: see professional licenses. Many are paid for by their companies.

If the employer chooses to pay for it, that's fine -- they are not obligated to. If the employer wishes to pay people to stand in that screening line, they are free to do so, but they are not obligated to do so.

I still completely do not understand the functional difference. If you cannot do a part of a job without a given component, that component is part of the job.

Just because something is needed to do the job doesn't mean the employer is obligated to pay for it. The plaintiffs argued that under the FLSA, the employer was obligated to pay for the workers when they were standing in line. For that to be the case, the FLSA requires that the activity be an "integral and indispensable" part of their job. It isn't. It's really that simple.

Obviously many agree with me, including the first court, so it's not like I'm just completely retarded.But it's completely wrong.

Actually, no. The first court ruled for the defendants as well. The appeals court --- the infamous ninth circuit court renowned for idiotic decisions that get overturned by the scotus --- came up with the ruling in favor of the plaintiffs.

The fact that the ruling was unanimous makes it pretty obvious that there was no case here, the 9th circuit was wrong as usual.

Amazon has clearly decreed that the job cannot exist without screening, and so it is an essential part of working in that capacity.

That's just not relevant. Just because something is a requirement for the job doesn't mean the employer is obligated to pay for it.

If you don't like the stipulation that you have to wait unpaid in the screening line, you have the option of seeking employment elsewhere.

 

[rudeguy]

IMO, that shouldn't be paid for because it is part of normal travel to work. Being required to wait through a security check point is a mandatory part of the work place procedure and should be paid for. The law, however, does not agree with this as written. People should move to change the law to include anything that is controlled and mandatory by the company.

I have witnessed too much bitching over little stuff like this. I worked at a call center where there was literally a class action lawsuit because people weren't getting paid while Windows loaded. Really?

I come into work, walk through the office, through the warehouse, up a flight of stairs, through 2 other rooms, then I get to my shop. After that I have to unlock the door, turn on the lights and walk all the way across the shop to get to my computer to log in. Should I be paid from the time I walk in the door? Who gives a shit! Hell half the time I stop to chat, make coffee, dick around in the warehouse before I ever even make it up the stairs.

People need to get a grip on reality and stop being so damn greedy.

 

[PokerGuy]

That's what the courts are saying.

No, that's not at all what the court said. Read the ruling.

What they have to do is say no and if they are fired for that reason then they go back and say they were told it was not a intrinsic element of the job, and the company even argued that in court, but when they did not do it they were fired as it was part of the job.

Nope, sorry, but that's just completely wackadoodle wrong. I have no idea how you got that from the scotus ruling.

 

[marincounty]

Yeah, you righties love this crap, until Amazon employees go on strike and you can't get your shiny new objects.
This is what you get when the courts are packed with right wing idiots.

 

[Pulsar]

Yeah, you righties love this crap, until Amazon employees go on strike and you can't get your shiny new objects.
This is what you get when the courts are packed with right wing idiots.

Thanks. Your amazingly non-partisian and thoroughly considered viewpoint certainly raises the general level of conversation here. Or not.

 

[PokerGuy]

Yeah, you righties love this crap, until Amazon employees go on strike and you can't get your shiny new objects.
This is what you get when the courts are packed with right wing idiots.

Yeah, those evil righties on the court forced the good proggies to go along with them and make it a unanimous ruling. Yup, that's how it went down, the evil righties, always doing this kind of stuff

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Whatever you do, don't work on a refinery turn around. They have security checks going into and leaving the plant. You may also be selected for a random drug/alcohol test too.

 

[shira]

Replace "going through security" with "stuck in traffic on the way to work".... should employers have to pay for those stuck in traffic as well?

I can see both sides of this argument.

I wasn't aware the employers REQUIRE their workers to go through traffic jams every day as a condition of employment.

 

[shira]

And by the way, I do disagree with the SCOTUS's logic. Amazon's "exit screening" is an intrinsic strategy that Amazon pursues to keep costs down, as it helps to reduce the theft of its goods. This strategy is very important to Amazon, as they want their prices to remain competitive in the marketplace. The employees are being forced to participate in this intrinsic price-reduction strategy. Thus, waiting in line for 30 minutes is indeed an intrinsic part of the employees work activities, and should be compensated.

 

[Jimzz]

No, that's not at all what the court said. Read the ruling.



Nope, sorry, but that's just completely wackadoodle wrong. I have no idea how you got that from the scotus ruling.

Maybe you should read it...

"“one with which the employee cannot dispense if he is to perform his principal activities,”

So now what happens if the employee dispense of that part, do they get fired for it? If so why? Was it part of the job?

 

[werepossum]

I have witnessed too much bitching over little stuff like this. I worked at a call center where there was literally a class action lawsuit because people weren't getting paid while Windows loaded. Really?

I come into work, walk through the office, through the warehouse, up a flight of stairs, through 2 other rooms, then I get to my shop. After that I have to unlock the door, turn on the lights and walk all the way across the shop to get to my computer to log in. Should I be paid from the time I walk in the door? Who gives a shit! Hell half the time I stop to chat, make coffee, dick around in the warehouse before I ever even make it up the stairs.

People need to get a grip on reality and stop being so damn greedy.

Some of these people are part time. An unpaid mandatory thirty minutes tacked onto a four hour shift at $10 an hour is not insignificant.

Yeah, you righties love this crap, until Amazon employees go on strike and you can't get your shiny new objects.
This is what you get when the courts are packed with right wing idiots.

lol Darth Vader Ginsberg, "right wing idiot".

And by the way, I do disagree with the SCOTUS's logic. Amazon's "exit screening" is an intrinsic strategy that Amazon pursues to keep costs down, as it helps to reduce the theft of its goods. This strategy is very important to Amazon, as they want their prices to remain competitive in the marketplace. The employees are being forced to participate in this intrinsic price-reduction strategy. Thus, waiting in line for 30 minutes is indeed an intrinsic part of the employees work activities, and should be compensated.

Philosophically I agree with you, but a unanimous verdict suggests that the law is actually quite clear.

Man, the Ninth Circus is NOT having a good session. They are 0 for 4.

 

[Sinsear]

The workers should unionize.

 

[crashtech]

There's an unlimited supply of undocumented laborers that will be happy to put up with waiting in long lines for free.

 

[marincounty]

Yeah, those evil righties on the court forced the good proggies to go along with them and make it a unanimous ruling. Yup, that's how it went down, the evil righties, always doing this kind of stuff

You are denying the courts are packed with right wingers?
Democrats appoint moderates to the courts, and Republicans appoint the youngest, most extreme partisans to the courts.
Over time we get horrible right wing dominated courts.
Even California has a right wing Supreme Court.

 

[Dannar26]

Conservative, and this is total BS. It's a work activity...sure as hell isn't something I'm electing to do on personal time.

Pay them, or let them go.

 

[marincounty]

Arnold tried to take away lunch breaks in California.
WTF is wrong with Republicans and always trying to screw workers?

 

[halik]

Some good arguments on both sides, but I suspect this is correct. Seems to me that the employees are on the hook to a reasonable amount for the time required to get through security, but if it takes two minutes per person to go through security and the wait to get to the security check is more than a reasonable amount - maybe three or four minutes - then Amazon is keeping down its costs using its employees' time. In that case, Amazon should be liable for that time, or else pay for enough security that the wait is reasonable. It's the same principle - maybe a manager isn't there at the door exactly when I reach it, but if it's more than a couple minutes' wait then that is unreasonable and the store is using my time to get better utility from its managers. Or in this case, Amazon's contracted security screeners.

The other thing is the bit about being “integral and indispensable” to the principal activities workers are paid to do. In a secured office building, security screening is for everyone in the building and is generally on the way in. In this case, security screening is exclusively for Amazon's operations, some of which are subcontracted. Hard to see how security screening exclusively of Amazon's contract workers exclusively for the benefit of Amazon's operations would not be “integral and indispensable” to those workers' nominal jobs. Clearly the employee is on her own getting home, but getting to a public way ought to entail no great delay on the employee's dime.

I would think so. If this is something mandated as part of the condition of employment; I don't see why not. If I was hourly and had to clean my desk/work area before I leave I sure as shit wouldn't be doing on my own time.


Edit: To expand on the analogy, if you're hired as cashier for couple hours a week to a store with the caveat that you have to help clean up afterwards and that clean up turns out to double your stay there, I suppose you can always quit. Sort of odd though, because the management could extract a ton of free labor via turnover. Clearly there's huge information asymmetry there where employees wouldn't price in the cost of lengthy clean up into their original negotiation as cashiers.

 

[ivwshane]

Yes this deciscion doesnt make sense. My gut says there was a deal done in order to get a good vote on the upcoming ACA case.

 

[Blanky]

I need to eat and sleep to stay healthy enough to come into work, should an employer pay for that too? There has to be limits to what intrinsic to the job means, especially in a legal discussion.

Surely you realize this is a poor analogy. If you don't have your job will you continue to eat and sleep? Yes. If you don't have this job at amazon will you continue to stand in amazon-mandated screening lines? No.

I do like what another person pointed out in reference to the California law that says when you are under employer control they pay, otherwise they don't, that is about the fairest way I can think of. There is still some grey area there, but at least not as much.

Yes, that is perfectly reasonable, and as exercised here I think would induce Amazon to pay.

Again, no. By your logic, having diploma or certification would be an intrinsic element of a job if that certification was a prerequisite of the job. That's just not the case. A requirement for being able to do the job is not the same as an intrinsic element of the job itself.

Yes, a diploma is in such a case if a prerequisite for a job an intrinsic requirement of it. However, a diploma is usable elsewhere; you lose your job, you can still use that. These screening lines and time spent in them serve Amazon alone.

Just because something is needed to do the job doesn't mean the employer is obligated to pay for it. The plaintiffs argued that under the FLSA, the employer was obligated to pay for the workers when they were standing in line. For that to be the case, the FLSA requires that the activity be an "integral and indispensable" part of their job. It isn't. It's really that simple.

They got it wrong, IMO.

Amazon pays people to pick and pack, right? So, why are they paying them for time spent walking from point to point, if the only actual part of the job they want to pay for is to physically move an item from one box into another.

Again, let's just be clear: Amazon has constructed these positions in such a manner, constructing the work environment in a particular manner, that without security screenings the positions won't exist; amazon will be forced to change them, thus they are essential to the job.

The fact that the ruling was unanimous makes it pretty obvious that there was no case here, the 9th circuit was wrong as usual.

Legally I agree. I just think it's morally incorrect and as somebody else posted after me the laws should be changed.

And by the way, I do disagree with the SCOTUS's logic. Amazon's "exit screening" is an intrinsic strategy that Amazon pursues to keep costs down, as it helps to reduce the theft of its goods. This strategy is very important to Amazon, as they want their prices to remain competitive in the marketplace. The employees are being forced to participate in this intrinsic price-reduction strategy. Thus, waiting in line for 30 minutes is indeed an intrinsic part of the employees work activities, and should be compensated.

Exactly my thoughts. This job cannot and does not exist without screening as Amazon has defined it. It is as essential to the job as walking from bin to bin or using pens; would amazon refuse to pay for time spent walking from bin to bin? or money spent on pens? Or the heating of the work space?

All Amazon has done here is taken a necessary, essential part of security of inventory that all companies have and pushed it out of their time onto the employees' by forcing employees through a screening that directly benefits amazon but is not during the employee's regular shift. Inventory security is essential to a warhouse of this nature. Amazon knows this, which is why they do it. They just don't want to spend their time on it.

 

[Triumph]

Workers absolutely should be paid for security screening if it is part of the job. If you show up at your place of business on time, that's when the clock starts. I don't care if they tell you to go through a security line or tell you to take a shit for a half an hour, you are there, you are taking orders, you get paid.

Here's a case in point. At a local military base recently, the base security arbitrarily decided one day to increase screenings at the entrance to the base. People got to the security check point at their normal time, only today it took an additional two hours to get through security. Do you think this should not count as time worked on the base, when the base actively pursues activities to prevent you from getting to your desk?

 

[PokerGuy]

And by the way, I do disagree with the SCOTUS's logic. Amazon's "exit screening" is an intrinsic strategy that Amazon pursues to keep costs down, as it helps to reduce the theft of its goods. This strategy is very important to Amazon, as they want their prices to remain competitive in the marketplace. The employees are being forced to participate in this intrinsic price-reduction strategy. Thus, waiting in line for 30 minutes is indeed an intrinsic part of the employees work activities, and should be compensated.

Just because something is part of amazon's strategy to keep costs down does NOT mean it meets the legal definition set forth in the FLSA. The court (by a clear 9-0 vote) agreed that the screening does not constitute a principal activity and is not an intrinsic element of the job performed. It doesn't matter if it's part of a strategy or not.

The very fact that the ruling was unanimous, where every justice from far left to far right was in complete agreement shows it was very clear cut.

 

[PokerGuy]

Maybe you should read it...

"“one with which the employee cannot dispense if he is to perform his principal activities,”

So now what happens if the employee dispense of that part, do they get fired for it? If so why? Was it part of the job?

Just because something is a requirement for the job does not mean it's an intrinsic element of the job or the principal activity of the job. Those are two completely different things.

 

[Brainonska511]

Just because something is part of amazon's strategy to keep costs down does NOT mean it meets the legal definition set forth in the FLSA. The court (by a clear 9-0 vote) agreed that the screening does not constitute a principal activity and is not an intrinsic element of the job performed. It doesn't matter if it's part of a strategy or not.

The very fact that the ruling was unanimous, where every justice from far left to far right was in complete agreement shows it was very clear cut.

It might not meet the legal standard for being wrong, but it's still wrong in a moral sense to force employees to wait in a security line unpaid in order for them to leave the premise.

 

[Subyman]

I have witnessed too much bitching over little stuff like this. I worked at a call center where there was literally a class action lawsuit because people weren't getting paid while Windows loaded. Really?

I come into work, walk through the office, through the warehouse, up a flight of stairs, through 2 other rooms, then I get to my shop. After that I have to unlock the door, turn on the lights and walk all the way across the shop to get to my computer to log in. Should I be paid from the time I walk in the door? Who gives a shit! Hell half the time I stop to chat, make coffee, dick around in the warehouse before I ever even make it up the stairs.

People need to get a grip on reality and stop being so damn greedy.

Perhaps there should be a standard way of calculating work time. I think it would be in everyone's best interest to make it clear when the work day starts for someone. I'd say having the clock or log-in procedure located within x many feet of an unimpeded entrance to be a good place to start the discussion.