9th Circuit Rules Apple Owes Retail Workers for Time Spent Security Screening

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/09/03/apple-owes-retail-workers-time-spent-bag-checks/

by clairity • 6 years ago

219 235 6 years ago

falcolas• 6 years ago

Good. It’s not a part of their commute, and it’s required to start/end working. So, just fricking pay them.

refurb2• 6 years ago

Yeah, the Amazon ruling never made sense to me. If your employer is restricting what you can do with your time (I.e. wait for a security screen before leaving work) then they need to pay you for that time.

ghshephard• 6 years ago

It's not so much what makes sense - I think the vast majority, if not everyone, on HN would agree that it makes sense to pay an employee if they are required to perform a particular time-consuming security screening while on the work site as part of their job. The question is, what does the law say - and, rather than have judges go against the law, and do what they think makes sense, the proper approach is to change the law.

disown• 6 years ago

It makes you wonder. Why isn't commute included? At the very least, shouldn't it be compensated 50% since it is activity done partly for work while not work itself?

anigbrowl3• 6 years ago

A lot of companies put up money for transit costs, but the transit time is a function of where the employee lives, which is something the employer has zero control over.

RcouF1uZ4gsC2• 6 years ago

It seems there was a similar case in 2014 about Amazon workers not getting paid for screening time. The US Supreme Court decided unanimously that Amazon did not have to pay them.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/business/supreme-court-ru...

How is this case different from the precedent established by the Amazon case?

Edit:

In the 2014 case, it was the 9th Circuit that was being overruled. I wonder if this decision is destined for the same fate.

ebg13• 6 years ago

State requirement vs federal requirement. A better question I think is how did the US Supreme Court get the decision so spectacularly wrong?

RcouF1uZ4gsC2• 6 years ago

A better question I think is how did the US Supreme Court get the decision so spectacularly wrong?

I think when there is a unanimous decision, you can’t just jump to that premise. Remember, the job of the Supreme Court is to interpret the law. Laws can be bad or unjust (without being unconstitutional) and the Supreme Court will go with what the law says.

clairity3• 6 years ago

yes, that's actually what prompted me to submit the article, to stimulate discussion around that very question.

i haven't looked into each case in enough depth to have formulated an opinion yet, so i'm hoping we hn'ers come to some conclusions on that question together. =)

gamblor9562• 6 years ago

Amazon case was a matter of a federal law on pre and post shift activities.

This case is about a CA state law, so Amazon case would not apply.

skunkworker• 6 years ago

Will this also apply to the California Supreme Court ruling that Amazon won back in 2013?

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/business/supreme-court-ru...

granzymes2• 6 years ago

Judging by this quote, there’s a good chance SCOTUS overturns a ruling on this topic by the 9th circuit a second time.

Justice Thomas disagreed, saying the appeals court had “erred by focusing on whether an employer required a particular activity.” The right test, he said, was whether the activity “is tied to the productive work that the employee is employed to perform.”

Maybe the 9th will overturn en blanc before it reaches SCOTUS.

azinman2• 6 years ago

That’s a very silly viewpoint. If I have to travel to the North Pole to change a lightbulb, should I only get paid for changing the lightbulb? If the security screening takes 9h, would we really expect employees not to be paid? If so, these would be pretty terrible job arrangements.

dv_dt• 6 years ago

Maybe the right test hasn't been applied yet. If one is at work say at a burger place, and were working as a cashier, then need to go back to do food prep and need to wash your hands, are you suddenly off the clock while washing your hands? Are you working the whole time? If you travel to your work, and get in line at work to get security screened or wash your hands why would it be different in the middle than at the start of the day?

dragonwriter2• 6 years ago

Why do you think that one-sentence quote from the dissent makes it likely the SCOTUS would overrule this? I mean, what makes you think a Supreme Court majority would agree that that is the correct test?

gamblor9562• 6 years ago

State law vs federal law. Amazon case was a matter of federal law so it would not govern here.

tssva• 6 years ago

That was a U.S. Supreme Court ruling and not a California Supreme Court ruling. The plantiffs in that case were not all workers in CA and the case was based around the federal portal to portal law. This decision is based upon California state law and involves only employees in California for which state law would apply.

red_hare• 6 years ago

As a teenager, I worked running boardwalk games for a very well known theme park. I don't want to say the name, but let's just say it was one with many flags.

Every day the workflow was as follows:

  1. Sign-in in the employee entrance office.
  2. Get your cash bag from costumes.
  3. Pick up $200 worth of singles from the cash office for making change which both you and the teller would count out.
  4. Go through a security check.
  5. Walkthrough the park from the employee entrance to where your game was (often the other side of the park).

The whole thing took 20 minutes and we would signed-in to start being paid at the next 15 minute interval from when we arrived at our game.

When we checked out, we did the whole process in reverse but would be signed-out for the previous 15 minute interval when we left our game area.

All in all, we were losing 40-68 minutes of wages per day. Worse if there were long lines in the office or costumes or the cash office.

Of course, we were also only paid $6.15 an hour and had to pay union dues out of that, so in total, it didn't add up to much...

spaced-out• 6 years ago

Of course, we were also only paid $6.15 an hour and had to pay union dues out of that, so in total, it didn't add up to much...

Not to you, but it definitely added up to a noticeable amount for your employer.

rgbrenner• 6 years ago

That's a lot.. an hour a day is 1/8th of your pay. If this was year around, that would be (260 work days) $1600.. out of $12800/year total gross pay for full time.

You say it's not a lot, but that's only because the job doesn't pay a lot and (I assume) it was short term.

OldHand20182• 6 years ago

As a teenager, I worked at a Kmart. It didn't take too long to be "promoted" to cashier. They never let anyone near the money room without already being on the clock.

You got your till loaded with cash, counted it out, and walked to your register. All on the clock. When done, you took your till back, counted it out, and handed it back in. All on the clock.

I'm only writing this as a counter example - not every place was awful about it.

mikestew• 6 years ago

had to pay union dues out of that

Rhetorical question, but what the hell was the union doing while this wage theft was going on?

nickff• 6 years ago

Some unions basically 'collect' members by unionizing a bunch of small-medium size companies which are completely separate from their 'main business(es)'; they proceed to basically ignore these members, and just collect dues from them.

liability• 6 years ago

It's stunning your union would permit this shit. It's no wonder Americans in general are so sour on unions if this is a representative experience.

MiroF6• 6 years ago

Unions are hard because employers can basically do whatever the fuck they want to fight the union and they usually only get the NLRB injunction/penalty months/years later, after everyone originally supporting the action has been removed by the company.

Some unions are also just in the pocket of management. I have friends who are teamster organizers and they've told me some managers in some industries will actually request unions.

dawnerd• 6 years ago

From what I’ve seen with friends in the amusement industry, the unions don’t really work for them and in some cases are run by the company itself (not directly but with directors that have obvious conflicts).

lotsofpulp3• 6 years ago

I’m more ashamed of the legislature that allows this to happen. There’s no reason an employer should not have the pay the minute they expect something of the employee, assuming it’s a position paid per unit of time.

godzillabrennus2• 6 years ago

Not to mention the mafia ran most of the powerful unions in America before the feds destroyed that type of organized crime.

I sometimes wonder if despite the brutality of their tactics, did the mafia help the working class more than hurt it?

MiroF6• 6 years ago

Over 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year, that's a loss of ~$2000 in 2020 dollars, not counting the dues

98codes• 6 years ago

Meanwhile, at the Magic Kingdom down in Florida, we would clock in after taking the bus from the employee lot to the main park employee entrance and then get our uniform, get changed, walk to the attraction, etc.

On leaving, we would leave our attraction 20 minutes prior to the end of our shift, walk back, get changed, etc, and then clock out.

Unions matter. I'm shocked that any union would allow off the clock work like that.

AnthonyMouse• 6 years ago

How is the conclusion that unions matter when they both had unions?

More likely the cause of the disparity -- because this is actually a difference between the companies -- is that Disney tries to maintain a certain image about the wholesomeness of their enterprise which isn't worth compromising to avoid paying 8% more to workers who still aren't really making altogether that much money, and they also charge enough of a premium to be able to afford it.

Mountain_Skies• 6 years ago

Flight attendants have unions but still don't get paid unless the airplane door is closed.

fsociety• 6 years ago

Grew up in a town dictated by a union... they aren’t all good. Watched a lot of people lose their only source of income because they couldn’t reach a unanimous vote during an economic downturn.

SllX• 6 years ago

Just like it is best not to hold romantic notions about corporations, it is also best not to hold romantic notions about unions (which are just another type of corporation), non-profits (same) and bureaucracies in general.

Some unions serve their members very well. Some are leeches. In either case they tend to stick together to raise their political power when possible.

jdmichal2• 6 years ago

... signed-in to start being paid at the next 15 minute interval from when we arrived at our game.
... signed-out for the previous 15 minute interval when we left our game area.

This is actually the most surprising thing to me in your story. Usually the laws about rounding in time keeping state that the rounding must go the same direction. So if they round to the next interval on start, they should also be rounding to the next interval on end.

The reason why this is the most surprising part to me, is because that's a pretty cut-and-dry labor violation. Compared to the rest that would have to go through a court case like the one in TFA.

throwaway2048• 6 years ago

Employers, even large ones, regularly conduct large scale wage theft and nobody fights it.

ROFISH• 6 years ago

Huh. I did the exact same job for a competing park, owned by a fair, and we got paid from when we showed up to the main office to when we ended at the main office.

The only unpaid time was the walk to/from the very back of the parking lot to the main office.

burtonator• 6 years ago

Of course, we were also only paid $6.15 an hour and had to pay union dues out of that, so in total, it didn't add up to much...

I'm half joking but if your union dues were higher you would have been paid for that hour :-P

Forbo• 6 years ago

If only wage theft were pursued as viciously as other forms of theft.... The amount that happens is frankly quite disgusting.

https://i.redd.it/grnr8kxbl6zz.jpg

colejohnson666• 6 years ago

I’ve seen this chart before, and I believe it, but how is the wage theft number calculated? If employers are underpaying workers, how does one find out how much without a court ruling against the company?

zaarn4• 6 years ago

Just the overtime and minimum violations could pay every US citizen a roughly 3000$ sized paycheck.

bigtex• 6 years ago

Many decades ago something similar happened with Best Buy employees and waiting to leave the building. My memory is fuzzy but I recall it having to do with some ruling by a government authority. Basically at night shift we could clock out but had to wait for the manager to let us out of the building. Sometimes were were waiting for 15 + minutes. All employees got back pay.

ClumsyPilot2• 6 years ago

This should have been an open-and-shut case, its unbelievable that it took years to re-affirm established norm that employees must be paid for their time, no matter what the firm decides to waste it on. So don't waste it.

ponker2• 6 years ago

The idea that they wouldn’t is laughable/horrifying.

gumby3• 6 years ago

This is really great. How did amazon’s case manage to get the opposite ruling, years ago?

colejohnson666• 6 years ago

Amazon was ruled using federal law as not everyone in the suit was based in California. In this case, it’s Californians suing under California law.

gumby3• 6 years ago

The ninth circuit is a federal court with no jurisdiction over state laws.

LatteLazy2• 6 years ago

Didn't this already get ruled the other way by scotus?

ensignavenger• 6 years ago

Federal law in the Amazon case, California law in this Apple case.

LatteLazy2• 6 years ago

Ah! That makes sense. Thanks!

quesera4• 6 years ago

The fact that Apple let this go to court is disappointing.

Apple should do the right thing here, even if they are not legally obligated.

Pay retail employees for all work which is required of them. Do not dither over trivialities.

andybak2• 6 years ago

I posted a similar sentiment but you've highlighted the key point. It's (slightly) understandable that this was company policy as it was probably decided somewhere down the food chain.

But at the point it became a court case, red lights should have been flashing at the highest levels that this was the kind of thing that paints the company in a terrible light.

This is proper "don't be evil" territory. Don't be the bad guys, the cardboard cutout evil capitalists.

Nobody on the board thought this was a bad look?

GeekyBear4• 6 years ago

This is proper "don't be evil" territory.

It's a bad look, for sure, but common in high end retail.

Proper evil territory featuring cardboard cutout evil capitalists looks more like this:

Google, facing an advertising slump caused by the pandemic, has rescinded offers to several thousand people who had agreed to work at the company as temporary and contract workers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/technology/google-rescind...

matz17• 6 years ago

Disagree, as Apple, it is in their best interest to fight this.

For apple, employee are expenses, reducing expense and increasing profit is what a company should do.

jchw6• 6 years ago

...was it worth the legal costs?

By this logic they might as well try not paying their employees at all and letting that go to court too.

(To clarify, it's not that I necessarily think there's anything particularly egregious about the original practice since it seems commonplace, but the replyee's sentiment that they should've just given in is absolutely correct.)

C1sc0cat2• 6 years ago

Not from an optics POV companies don't want to be the plaintiff in high profile cases like this.

triceratops• 6 years ago

reducing expense and increasing profit is what a company should do.

Who said that?

michaelmrose• 6 years ago

You aren't required by corporate ethics to be maximally unethical especially when it contravenes the law. Being perceived as unethical towards your workforce can furthermore hurt recruiting meaning that after you have begun following the letter and spirit of the law per the courts mandate, even after you pay off the extortionate lawyers,, you now eat higher expenses to acquire and retain a competent workforce.

Its not the best thing for the corp or for the workers. Its a stupid decision.

microtherion• 6 years ago

Good employees are an ASSET, and treating employees shabbily jeopardizes your chances of hiring the best ones.

pwinnski• 6 years ago

I earnestly hope that you are not in a position to hire employees, and that you never reach such a position without developing a better ethical sense and maybe some empathy.

In practice, your approach seems like it would result in very poor employee performance due to them not feeling valued, but the world is a weird place, and it might take some time before reality catches up.

dkonofalski4• 6 years ago

I'm conflicted about the decision for a few reasons:

1. The "off-the-clock" mandates came from individual managers, not from Apple corporate so Apple corporate should have addressed that immediately. Unless that's been changed recently, this could have been nipped in the bud from the start.

2. The store policies do outline that personal bags must be inspected before employees leave the store but it doesn't mention anything about whether that needs to be done after they've clocked out. I used to work with/in an Apple Store and even we were required to do this but it was always done before we clocked out for the day. I know the article says that employees were required to clock out prior to the bag check but that was not my experience.

3. Retail employees should absolutely have been paid by those managers if they were mandating this and it should never have gone to court in the first place. The decision is right but I feel like most of the costs are going to go to lawyers and that rubs me the wrong way.

4. Policies also spelled this out before employees came into the stores. If I knew I wasn't getting paid for this, I feel like I'd be less inclined to bring a bag with me. Not sure if that's right but it feels like there should have been some pushback from employees to higher-level people. It sounds like an HR issue from the get-go.

pmiller22• 6 years ago

Managers are generally considered to be agents of the company, so, their actions can legally incur liability on the company. I don't find it that hard to believe that individual store managers might do this, but that word of the practice might not make it up to corporate. This explanation is simple and plausible enough to me that I'm inclined to think it's probably exactly what had been happening.

quesera4• 6 years ago

Right. I can absolutely imagine how midlevel management created this issue, under complicated circumstances (employee variability, store level theft issues, time clocks, performance measurements, standard retail practices, etc)

And sure, not being paid for screening time does disincentivize the bringing of bags (although in a somewhat gender-discriminatory way -- males would have fewer issues than females). Reducing the number of bags to screen reduces the workload of the screener, and reduces the chance that something will be missed, which is clearly a benefit to the company.

But at some point, someone at the CxO level has to step in and do the right thing for employees and for the company. Apple's brand is damaged by this practice, and by this lawsuit, regardless of the decision.

Analemma_• 6 years ago

The decision is right but I feel like most of the costs are going to go to lawyers and that rubs me the wrong way.

Please be aware that this attitude is being deliberately nurtured by big businesses to erode support for class-action lawsuits (much like the McDonald's hot coffee controversy was deliberately and loudly misrepresented to make people cynical towards perfectly-justified personal injury suits).

Class-action suits are not supposed to make injured parties whole, that has never been the point; they are supposed to function as an expensive deterrent to bad behavior. But businesses would rather they go away entirely, so they want to make people angry at "those wily lawyers getting rich instead of the little guy". It's just as disingenuous and disgusting as attacking defense attorneys for "sticking up for bad guys".

stale20022• 6 years ago

Apple has a bit of a "never give a single inch" strategy to the bad things that it does.

No matter how wrong it is (and, such as this case, where they lost in court), they will fight it to the very end.

cactus2093• 6 years ago

It's quite bizarre, especially when you consider how inefficient Apple stores are to begin with. They're intended as much for marketing, brand awareness, and a display of gluttony via the impressive modern construction that invites parallels to their premium products and manufacturing quality, as they are for actually selling products. They have way more employees working than they'd need if they just had normal retail workflows with check-out counters (and are also more frustrating to navigate as a customer). They even include entire mini-auditoriums to put on free events, weird seminars and panels and even concerts that nobody asked for.

But making sure employees aren't paid while they wait to be able to leave is a critically important cost-saving measure and worth going to court over?

andybak2• 6 years ago

The fact that this awful nickle and diming of staff doesn't get vetoed by someone with a shred of awareness about PR, morale, good management and anything else beyond short-term balance sheet thinking speaks very ill of the company concerned.

nerdponx• 6 years ago

They know that the bad PR won't affect their bottom line much, if at all, unless it turns into some kind of Draconian regulation/penalties, which it won't.

spaetzleesser3• 6 years ago

The notion that an employer can mandate things to do but not pay for that time is completely ridiculous. This is a good decision.

ehnto• 6 years ago

edit: wrong thread

ldoughty3• 6 years ago

Like many people, I worked retail. I never got angry at the security guy trying to let me out the door, but it was frustrating to wait 5 minutes here and there unpaid.

I agree that people should be paid for that time.. but I'm also curious where the line is drawn? I left the city to work on a small town because my commute 5 miles/day was 15-20 hours/week. I suppose you can argue many jobs pay well enough to cover that... But people also work retail in those areas.

An ideal solution would be to spread out the cities -- encourage more remote working (though not like we currently see)... But in lieu of that, where is the limit?

Is employee parking, which is a 5 minute walk to the back of the lot, covered? I had a friend that works at a car factory... If you don't drive that manufacturers car, you park in lot B, an extra minute or three away. Is that any different then being forced to stand at the for to leave a few minutes now and then? (It's not always 5-15 minutes, where this example is a constant).

Please accept this as a thought experiment... Not a criticism against better pay for retail. Everyone deserves the pursuit of happiness.

thinkingkong• 6 years ago

In your example you keep saying 5m as though thats the industry standard sla for security. Thats probably fine. The problem is that if the time is unpaid, theres no balancing force to get people through the queue. If you have to spend more on security guards to get the median time to check someone down to 5m, why would you do it if you dont have to?

ldoughty3• 6 years ago

My average wait time was less than a minute.. though on a few years days i'd wait 5 minutes or more. I don't disagree with you... Just curious where people think the line is drawn. I personally look at this from the other side -- if we were more accepting of remote work, would cities be so large? Traffic so bad?

But obviously, that's not today... So should the Starbucks employee be paid for their commute time? Is it their choice to drive 45 minutes to work? Or is that a mandated job function by applying? What if they were transferred? It's no longer the employee choice, but a business requirement to work there.

Like I said, thought experiment. I agree, paying for the time created incentive, probably a good thing.

ponker2• 6 years ago

If your job requires you to do something, yes it should be paid. Including walking from your car, at some reasonable pace.

ultrarunner• 6 years ago

I've had this same thought before, but where do you draw the line? Should employers compensate employees for time spend showering? Can employees sue for wrongful termination if they refuse to maintain personal hygiene for free? It's a ridiculous example, but somewhere between there and being compensated for performing a function lies the answer.

GeneralMayhem2• 6 years ago

The limit, legally, is pretty cut and dry: commute time is not paid, anything on site is. If you have to wait in line for security, that's paid. If it takes 10 minutes to count out your till at the end of a cashier shift, that's paid. If you're sent to another location in the middle of the day, time getting there from your normal place of work is paid.

There are a small handful of edge cases that vary by state (e.g., if you have to change into a uniform when you get to work, that's considered on-the-clock in California, but not federally), but not many.

peterpeppers• 6 years ago

Exactly!

There is a reason why factories put their punch clock AT THE DOOR.

Workers leave their assigned areas, pass through security, proceed to the punch clock and exit the facility.

Apple is one of the wealthiest companies in the world. The cost of adding an additional security guard and letting their employees exit from the rear of each store is negligible.

ldoughty3• 6 years ago

How do you feel about "employee parking" being an extra minute or two away? That time adds up to... And it's virtually the same thing -- ”company policy mandatees you ___"...

I agree with everything you're staying, but add I said, this is a thought experiment... What would be a good line to draw?

snuxoll• 6 years ago

Time spent waiting for a mandatory search is time spent as part of your employment, just like the time you spend logging into your computer and any programs you need to do your work.

erik_seaberg• 6 years ago

It sounds like it’s not mandatory if you don’t bring a bag or an iPhone into the store. I wonder whether they could keep a whitelist of Bluetooth IDs for employee-owned iPhones.

__float• 6 years ago

I worked in a call center where we were explicitly not paid to do those things. You were expected to have already done all of that by the time your shift started, otherwise you were considered late.

Apple isn't alone here, but they're obviously a fun big target for it.

purple-again• 6 years ago

There is a very clear line in that you chose that commute. You can find housing near your employer. You have a laundry list of personal reasons why that housing is not right for you but the fact remains you chose to have those things and commute instead of living nearby and sacrificing those things.

The employer requiring you to do something as a condition of continued employment is clearly, well obviously not, an act that should be compensated for. They could let you leave 15 minutes early to go through security check, they just don’t want to because, apparently, they don’t have to.

I have no doubt that you will find a group of people on the other side of the line there who think employers should have to pay for commuting time and obviously this case proves there are people on the other side of this line who think they shouldn’t have to compensate you for going through security time. However I would guess that the majority of people will agree that hardships you impose on yourself are your responsibility while hardships the employer imposes on you should be their responsibility.

JellyBeanThief• 6 years ago

You can find housing near your employer. You have a laundry list of personal reasons why that housing is not right for you but the fact remains you chose to have those things and commute instead of living nearby and sacrificing those things.

I think this is only reasonable for jobs that 1) offer enough compensation that the worker has real choice about where they live and 2) both worker and employer expect the worker to live and work in the same place for a long time.

A lot of people are in situations where, rather than them choosing the housing, it's the landlord choosing the tenant, and the tenant has to take what they can get. At one and the same time, they may also be in a situation where, rather than them choosing the employer, it's the employer choosing the worker, and again, the worker takes what they can get. A long commute is not a self-imposed hardship when other people are the primary determiners of where you can live and work.

6gvONxR4sf7o• 6 years ago

If that’s a clear line, how does zoning work? If there isn’t anything residential within ten minutes, your clear line flips: you cannot choose to live closer, so does everyone get paid an extra 20 minutes per day for the minimum commute? I don’t think it’s such a clear line.

It’s even fuzzier with the common situation of nothing remotely affordable within X minutes commute. You can’t choose a $3M home on minimum wage, so the delineation of what is and isn’t forced on you to do this job is very fuzzy.

p1necone• 6 years ago

I think a line can be pretty cleanly drawn at "employer explicitly makes you do it in order to receive your paycheck". Like I wouldn't expect to be paid for my walk from the parking lot any more than be paid for the rest of my commute as that's not actually related to the job site, it's just a consequence of my transport method - what if I was catching the bus, or walking, or I lived in an apartment building across the road?

Conversely - mandatory security screening is something that the company makes all employees go through every day as part of their job - it's no different from any other job task.

Although having a separate further away carpark for people that don't eat and presumably pay for the company dog food is shitty for other reasons. Similar to some clothing stores forcing their minimum wage workers to buy and wear on brand clothing (yes this is a thing).

Spooky23• 6 years ago

I worked retail. That’s absurd — if I’m stuck in your building, pay me.

If the Apple store has serious pilferage issues, get serious about controls around product. I cannot imagine how much shrink they have —- you could heist $50k worth of stuff trivially with 3-4 people.

_jal• 6 years ago

I get to choose where I live in relation to where I work. I also don't have to go home after work. That is my time to use as I wish.

Going through a pat down is not my time. I must wait on my employer.

It is also unilaterally redefinable. If $employer comes up with a new screen that saves them shrinkage, why should labor be expected to give up even more unpaid time for the privilege of submitting to it?

hkai2• 6 years ago

Anecdotally, it seems that most places in the world pay a fixed salary even to the lowest paid workers, instead of paying by the hour. Perhaps this could be a simpler solution to the problem instead of trying to reengineer cities.

jws2• 6 years ago

Always amazing to see how things are decided by tiny reading of the English language. The law states…

Hours worked’ means the time during which an employee is subject to the control of an employer, and includes all the time the employee is suffered or permitted to work, whether or not required to do so

The lower court read that as "hours worked is the time under employer control where the employee can work whether they do it or not". The supremes cut that into two statements at the ", and" and made "subject to the control of the employer" stand alone in addition to when they could be made to work.

By definition the supremes are correct, but the judges that ruled the other way are also very experienced judges.

Also important… Apple (probably accidentally) forfeited the "de minimis" argument which says employees don't have to be paid for small, incidental periods of time off the clock. I was expecting this case to be a declaration on reasonable "de minimis" requirements. Instead we got a sentence diagramming exercise.

mehrdadn6• 6 years ago

The lower court read that as "hours worked is the time under employee control where the employee can work whether they do it or not". The supremes cut that into two statements at the ", and" and made "subject to the control of the employer" stand alone in addition to when they could be made to work.

(1) I think you meant "time under employer control"?

(2) Are you suggesting the lower court just ignored the "is suffered" part?

jws2• 6 years ago

1 - thanks, fixed.

2 - the lower court appears to have used the back half of the sentence as describing the components of the first half.

Given the supremes’ reading, the back half doesn’t need to even be there, though I guess if you can conceive of someone working for a company but not subject to the control of the company it would cover some ground. Heaven knows I’ve had employees like that.

blintz• 6 years ago

Does it strike anyone else as absurd that a $2 trillion company has spent 5 years and untold millions arguing over whether it must compensate employees for the 15 minutes it takes for a company-mandated frisk?

In fact, Apple lawyers argued before the California Supreme Court that the time was not mandated since employees could waltz just opt to ‘not bring things with them’. How insane is that - the search is not technically ‘required’ since people don’t technically ‘need’ to bring things with them when they come to work? Who doesn’t need to bring a purse/phone/backpack to work?

The whole thing feels straight out of some alternative (dystopian?) future America like Infinite Jest.

krapp• 6 years ago

Does it strike anyone else as absurd that a $2 trillion company has spent 5 years and untold millions arguing over whether it must compensate employees for the 15 minutes it takes for a company-mandated frisk?

As an Amazon employee, no, it does not.

Ericson23142• 6 years ago

It's almost like the big corps are in collusion to keep wages down, whether they employ tons of low-wager workers or only a few.

Jasper_• 6 years ago

Maybe they got to $2 trillion because of worker-unfriendly policies like this one.

vertbhrtn4• 6 years ago

It's not surprising once we realize that the $2T company is just a bunch of people with different priorities. A major shareholder of Apple can't be bothered to know about this minor issue, but for those lawyers it was a career making event.

failuser• 6 years ago

You don’t get to 2T by paying more than you can.

millstone• 6 years ago

Neither do you get there by being a bottom-feeding barrel scraper. (Well you might, but that's not how Apple did it.)

On the merits the retail employees seem obviously in the right: once you've clocked out you should be free to leave. If corporate wants to impose some extra hassle, they get to do that, but you get paid for your time.

But more importantly, the Apple retail stores are legitimately awesome. The checkout experience is amazing. The genius bars are the best tech support I've ever had. Something is working really well here! Why squeeze the golden goose?

Apple should take a cue from other beloved retailers (Costco and Trader Joe's come to mind) and make their stores coveted employers for those seeking retail work. Just fucking treat your employees well, they'll return the favor.

hkai2• 6 years ago

Perhaps you are underestimating the amount of theft by employees, and the fact that hiring more security or paying for 15 mins of waiting time to each employee would cost even more.

Talanes• 6 years ago

More than what? The cost of the court case? Because that would be a gamble at best, and one they lost. Now they're paying the time and the court costs.

one2know• 6 years ago

So does this mean Amazon is going to start paying for their security screenings?

Trias11• 6 years ago

Sure.

They could easily charge thousands of their shady vendors peddling fakes to customers an extra fees to compensate for that.

learc833• 6 years ago

I worked at Best Buy during college, and if you closed you'd have to wait for a manager to unlock the door for you and check your stuff.

If I had to wait more than a minute or so, I'd fill out a time correction for the time I was spent locked in the building. Anytime someone said anything about it, I said if I'm stuck in the building I'm under the company's control, so I should be paid. Eventually managers just started getting there faster when I paged them.

A while later Best Buy was sued for this and lost.

Keverw• 6 years ago

Reminds me of reading an article talking about how Walmart used to lock people in who worked the night shift like stocking shelfs. Seems like Walmart was doing this in the early 2000s, there's an article from 2004 in the New York Times. Didn't know that there was a similar thing at Best Buy, wonder what year that was.

dliff• 6 years ago

I worked for Best Buy (Geek Squad) as well, about 12 years ago. I had the same experience. Even if they were going to pay me for the time, it felt wrong that they told me I was not able to leave. At times you could be waiting for 15 minutes. It was my first job at 16 years of age, and I didn't have the care or confidence to correct the time punch. At my store they would have to approve time punch modifications, so it would have been obvious if you did that every night.

The one person who did get fired for stealing was simply grabbing laptops, removing them from their box, and casually walking out with them.

deviation• 6 years ago

I don't understand- how were they not being paid? If I had to show up for a 9 to 5 and there was 15 minutes of security screening, I'm showing up at 9 and getting paid for it, not showing up early. Am I OOTL on something here? Were they threatened with termination?

learc833• 6 years ago

This isn't screening to get in, it's screening to leave. So your shift ends at 5, and they make you wait in a line to get out the door--after you'd already clocked out. And yes, you would be threatened with termination if you didn't wait in the security line

wtn• 6 years ago

The circumstances of this case seem similar to Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk, which involved workers at an Amazon warehouse in Nevada.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_Staffing_Solutions,_...

d3nj4l• 6 years ago

This is exactly what I thought about when I saw the headline. Amazon won that case and refused to pay for the security checks, does this ruling mean that they'll have to start paying too?

codyb• 6 years ago

Awesome that’s great. It’d be interesting if you could some how extend that to commuting, so hourly workers taking trains in for service work are compensated for their times in transit.

piyush_soni• 6 years ago

I (and probably many people here might) have thought about that in the past as well. It will surely be great from the employee's perspective, but thinking more about it, let's say a work day is 8 hours long. What if I stay 4 hours away from the office? I come and go everyday, and technically get paid for full day's work. There has to be some limit to it from the employer's perspective.

Please note that Europe had ruled a few years back that the time spent in commuting 'for work' must be counted as work hours (e.g. plumber travelling to client's location). But employees travelling to the same office everyday were excluded from that rule as far as I remember.

asciident• 6 years ago

Wouldn't that incentivize people to live further, in less connected areas, increasing urban sprawl, environmental degradation, and segregation?

heimatau• 6 years ago

Now onto Amazon, meat plants, and many other large-ish businesses that do this corrupt abuse of their workers time.

9th Circuit Rules Apple Owes Retail Workers for Time Spent Security Screening

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