Justices Will Decide Whether Workers Must Endure Unpaid Inconvenience
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in a case that could affect millions of low-wage hourly workers across the country. At issue is whether federal law requires employers to pay workers for significant amounts of time spent in security screenings.
Integrity Staffing Solutions Inc. is a temp agency that hires workers for many of Amazon's warehouses. The employees fill customer orders and package them to ship. But after the workers clock out, they have to go through anti-theft screening — a process that they say took an average of 25 minutes because the company set up just two screening checkpoints for 1,000 workers at the shift change in Nevada warehouses. The workers sued, contending that under federal law they should be paid for the time spent in the long screening process.
Former Bush Administration Solicitor General Paul Clement led off the argument on behalf of Integrity. He told the justices that under federal law, workers are not paid for clocking out or waiting to clock out, and therefore they should not be paid for the screening process afterwards.
Justice Elena Kagan interrupted with a question: Suppose you have an employer with an "extensive process for closing out cash registers" to protect against theft. Without the theft concern, you could close out the register much more quickly. The same would be true for bank tellers or casino employees: Instead of a couple of minutes, there would be a 20 minute anti-theft process. So, she asked, what's the difference "between that case and going through security at Amazon?"
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/10/08/354658408/justices-will-decide-whether-workers-must-endure-unpaid-inconvenience?
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