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Supreme Court rules Amazon doesn’t have to pay for after-hours time in security lines Supreme Court rules Amazon doesn’t have to pay for after-hours time in security lines
(35 minutes later)
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that workers who fill orders in Amazon.com warehouses need not be paid for the time they spend in security lines at the end of their shifts to make sure they haven’t stolen any products. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that workers who fill orders in Amazon.com warehouses need not be paid for the time they spend going through security checks to ensure they have not stolen any products.
The court reversed lower court ruling for the workers, who alleged they spent up to 25 minutes at warehouses in Nevada waiting to go through security clearance. The court reversed a lower court ruling for the workers, who alleged they spent up to 25 minutes waiting to go through security clearance at warehouses in Nevada.
But Justice Clarence Thomas said that federal law requires that workers be paid for activities before and after their shifts only when the activities are “integral and indispensable” to the job they are hired to perform.But Justice Clarence Thomas said that federal law requires that workers be paid for activities before and after their shifts only when the activities are “integral and indispensable” to the job they are hired to perform.
“The Court of Appeals erred by focusing on whether an employer required a particular activity,” Thomas wrote. “The integral and indispensable test is tied to the productive work that the employee is employed to perform.” “The court of appeals erred by focusing on whether an employer required a particular activity,” Thomas wrote. “The integral and indispensable test is tied to the productive work that the employee is employed to perform.”
He added that Integrity Staffing Solutions, a company that provides workers for Amazon warehouses across the nation, “did not employ its workers to undergo security screenings, but to retrieve products from warehouse shelves and package those products for shipment to Amazon customers.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit had ruled for the workers, but other appeals courts had interpreted the law the way the Supreme Court did.
(Amazon.com chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.) The class action suit was filed against Integrity Staffing Solutions, a company that provides workers for Amazon warehouses across the nation. (Amazon.com chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)
The implications of the decision would have been great had it gone the other way. There are more than a dozen class-action suits filed against Amazon and other companies that use security checks at the end of shifts to make sure none of their inventory walks out with the workers. A win would have opened the way for hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation.The implications of the decision would have been great had it gone the other way. There are more than a dozen class-action suits filed against Amazon and other companies that use security checks at the end of shifts to make sure none of their inventory walks out with the workers. A win would have opened the way for hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation.
The workers had claimed that because the security checks were required in order to keep their jobs, they should be compensated for their time. And they said that the company could cut the wait time by employing more security screeners or staggering shifts so that not all the workers were released at once. The court was examining the Portal-to-Portal Act, which Congress passed in 1947 to exempt companies from having to pay overtime for certain activities that take place before and after a worker’s shift.
But the court agreed with the Obama administration in reading the law to favor the company. And Thomas said it was not relevant to the law whether the company had ways to reduce the wait time. In previous cases, the court has identified activities that qualify as integral and indispensable to a worker’s duties. For instance, it said the time battery-plant employees spend showering and changing was compensable because of the toxic chemicals in the plant.
“These arguments are properly presented to the employer at the bargaining table, not to a court,” he wrote. The court also held that meatpacking employees should be paid for sharpening knives, because dull knives would make them less effective and affect the appearance of the product.
The case, Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk, was one of the first two signed opinions of the court’s current term. But the court noted Department of Labor regulations that said employees need not be paid for “checking in and out and waiting in line to do so” among other activities. The Obama administration sided with the company.
In the other, the justices were also unanimous, ruling that a juror’s comments during trial deliberations cannot be used to show a dishonesty that could lead to a new trial. Jesse Busk, who worked in the Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, and Laurie Castro, an hourly employee in Fenley, Nev., claimed that because the security checks were required in order to keep their jobs, they should be compensated for the time they spend waiting for security checks. And they said that the company could cut the wait time by employing more security screeners or staggering shifts so that not all the workers were released at once.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that a federal rule barring the admissability of statements made during deliberation defeated a South Dakota man’s request for a new trial. The court rejected both arguments. The company “did not employ its workers to undergo security screenings, but to retrieve products from warehouse shelves and package those products for shipment to Amazon customers,” Thomas wrote.
Gregory Warner was seriously injured when his motorcycle was struck by a truck driven by Randy Shauers; Warner lost at trial when he sought damages. He alleged that a juror whose daughter had been at fault in a fatal accident had told another juror about that case and that she had lied during voir dire about her ability to be impartial. And he said it was irrelevant whether the company had ways to reduce the wait time. “These arguments are properly presented to the employer at the bargaining table, not to a court,” he wrote.
But that does not fall into the limited exceptions for when information disclosed during jury deliberations becomes admissable, Sotomayor wrote. Amazon said the allegations from Busk and Castro “were simply not true.”
The case is Warger v. Shauers. “Data shows that employees typically walk through security with little or no wait, and Amazon has a global process that is designed to ensure the time employees spend waiting in security is less than 90 seconds,” spokeswoman Kelly Cheeseman said in a statement.
Joshua D. Buck, a lawyer for the class of workers represented by Busk and Castro, called the decision “very disappointing.”
“An employer is now free to waste as much of workers’ time as it so desires by forcing them to undergo time consuming anti-theft screenings without compensation,” Buck said in a statement.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan concurred in the decision but also wrote to say they understood the Portal-to-Portal act to distinguish between the ingress and egress process, on one hand, and activities that constitute actual work of consequence, on the other.
The security checks at issue fall on the side of leaving the workplace, Sotomayor wrote.
The case, Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk, was one of the court’s first two signedopinions of the term.