Generally speaking, employers are responsible to pay hourly employees for all of the time that the employees are under the employer’s direction and control. When employees are not paid for such time that they are under the employer’s control, they are said to be ‘working off the clock’ and there may be a violation of the law.
A recent case pending before the US Supreme Court will address the question of whether employees should be paid for time spent going through a security check after their shift. The case, called Integrity Staffing Solutions Inc. v. Busk, involves contract warehouse workers employed indirectly by Amazon. These workers claim that security checks take as much as 25 minutes. The Plaintiffs sued Integrity alleging violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). Integrity claims that it is immune from liability under the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947, which provides that employers are not required to compensate for activities that are after an employee’s primary work activities. The Supreme Court will address whether under the FLSA, as amended by the Portal-to-Portal Act, employers must compensate employees for post-shift security screenings. The case was argued and submitted October 8, 2014.
Read more about this case here:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-amazon-is-nervous-about-supreme-court-case/
