ACtion Magazine - May 2015 - (Page 10)
I
Court ruling impacts
time 'on the clock'
n the case of Integrity Staffing Solutions,
Inc. v. Busk decided in December 2014, a
unanimous United States Supreme Court
ruled that an employer does not have to compensate its hourly wage employees for time
spent waiting for and actually going through
a security screening before leaving work. The
employees in that case were responsible for
retrieving and packaging products in a
warehouse for delivery to customers of
Amazon.com.
Under the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act (the "FLSA"), an employee is
entitled to be paid for each hour worked
during a workweek, including overtime
pay for each hour worked in excess of forty
hours during that period. A workweek under the FLSA includes all of the time that an
employee is required to be on the employer's
premises, on duty or at a prescribed workplace.
After passage of the FLSA, Congress passed
the Portal-to-Portal Act which contains exemptions for employers from liability for wage
claims which are based upon two categories of
work-related activities. One category is walking, riding, or traveling to and from the place
where the employee will be performing his/her
principal work activity required by the job. The
second category covers activities that are preliminary to or postliminary to the employee's
principal work activity(ies).
In interpreting whether or not an activity
is within the foregoing second category of exempt activities, the Supreme Court indicated
that an activity must be an integral and indispensable part of the principal activity in order
to be included within the term principal activity
(and therefore compensable under the FLSA).
For an activity to be an integral and indispensable part of an employee's principal activity,
the activity must be one that an employee cannot dispense with if he/she is to perform his/
"
10
ACTION * May 2015
...activity must be an integral
and indispensable part of the
principal activity...
her principal activities. The activity for which an
employee is seeking compensation for the time
spent on said activity must be an intrinsic element of the principal activity(ies). An example
used by the Supreme Court in its decision is the
illustration of an employee in a chemical plant
who has to change his/her clothes as part of the
job. If the changing of the clothes is necessary
for an employee to be able to perform the principal activities of the job, then the time spent
changing clothes would be compensable under the FLSA. However, if the changing of the
clothes was found to be simply a matter of convenience to the employee, then the time spent
would not be compensable.
In the Busk case, the Supreme Court found
the time spent waiting for and actually going
through the security screening was noncompensable because the screenings were not the prin-
Reader Reply
Keith Leonard,
Esquire
cipal activity to be performed by the employees
who commenced the litigation. Such screenings
are not an intrinsic element of the job of retrieving and packaging products for shipment. In order to do those jobs, an employee can dispense
with the screening process. Instead, the screening process was simply connected to the job and
required by the employer to prevent theft. The
time spent involved in a search process at
your job, whether the search is conducted for
employee safety or theft prevention purposes,
will not be compensable. The Supreme Court
ruled that it is irrelevant to the compensation
issue that an employer requires a particular
activity. Similarly, the Court held that it is
irrelevant that an employer could take steps to
reduce the time spent on such a postliminary activity. The focus instead should be on productive
work that an employee has been employed to
perform and whether or not the activity at issue
is an indispensable element of that work.
Though a unanimous decision, two Justices added a concurring opinion to the decision (agreeing with the result but not necessarily all of the reasons for the conclusion reached
by the Court). The concurring Justices believe
that some employee activities related to worker
safety and efficiency are compensable activities
such as the time spent by meatpackers sharpening their knives. Both employers and employees
should be mindful of this decision with respect
to the essential elements of the job being performed by the employees at a particular workplace. An employer needs to be aware if any
of the activities performed by their employees
before and after the workday is compensable or
not. If not, a court may decide the issue for the
employer. ❆
Remember that laws are constantly
changing and are often not uniform
throughout the United States. Do not
place unqualified reliance on the information in this article. Always contact
legal counsel for detailed advice.
If you have a particular issue, law or
problem you would like to see addressed in a future column, please contact me at KLeonard@LeonardSciolla.
com, or Leonard, Sciolla, Hutchison,
Leonard & Tinari, LLP, 215-567-1530.
http://www.Amazon.com
http://www.dealerautomotive.com
http://www.macsw.org/imis15/MACS/Publications/ACtion_Reader_Reply/MACS/Publications/ACTION/ACtion_Reader_Reply.aspx?hkey=ac24bddb-c045-442a-813c-cbf05f88ac4d
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of ACtion Magazine - May 2015
Tool and equipment review
MACS mobile A/C training is everywhere
Outlook
Service Port
Leonard's Law
Virtual View
Last Watch
By the numbers
Industry News
Association News
In Memoriam
Classified
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