Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in the matter of Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk, et al., holding that employees are not entitled to be paid for time spent waiting in line to undergo a security screening before leaving work each day. This ruling is considered a major victory for the many large retail employers who are currently facing multi-million dollar class action lawsuits by employees seeking compensation for time spent in such security checks.
Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc., is a temp agency that provides hourly workers to employers such as retail giant Amazon.com. The plaintiffs in this case, Jesse Busk and Laurie Castro, were employed by Integrity at different Amazon warehouses to retrieve products from warehouse shelves and prepare them for shipment. Integrity requires its employees to pass through a security clearance at the end of each shift. Plaintiffs filed a class-action claim alleging that Integrity’s failure to pay employees for the time spent in the required security checkpoint violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
The FLSA establishes a federal minimum wage and requires that employees receive overtime compensation when they work more than 40 hours per week. The FLSA has been amended by the Portal-to-Portal Act which states that employers do not have to pay for activities that occur prior to, or subsequent to, the time an employee performs his or her “principal activities”. In interpreting the Portal-to-Portal Act, the Supreme Court has previously held that employees are entitled to be compensated for activities that are an “integral and indispensable part of the principle activities” for which the employee is employed. Thus, the issue in this ruling was whether the security screenings could be considered “integral and indispensable” parts of the Plaintiffs’ work.
Initially, the district court dismissed the Plaintiffs’ complaint, holding that time spent in a security checkpoint was non-compensable under the Portal-to-Portal Act. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that security, as a loss-prevention measure, was “integral and indispensable” and therefore, such work was compensable under the FLSA.
The Supreme Court disagreed and ruled the Ninth Circuit court had “erred by focusing on whether an employer required a particular activity.” The right test, according to the Court, was whether the activity “is tied to the productive work that the employee is employed to perform.” In this case, the Plaintiffs were hired to retrieve products from warehouse shelves and ready them for shipment. The Court held the security screenings were not “integral and indispensable” to the work of retrieving and packing products for shipment, thus, the screenings are non-compensable.
In reaching this decision, the Supreme Court contrasted the Plaintiffs’ case to examples from earlier court cases on compensable activities. For example, the Court noted its previous decisions that meatpacking workers are compensated for time spent sharpening knives, and battery factory workers are compensated for time to shower to remove toxic chemicals. According to the Court, however, the time Plaintiffs spent waiting in security checkpoints was more like a previous court decision holding poultry workers need not be paid for time spent putting on equipment because the activity performed by the Plaintiffs and the poultry workers was “two steps” removed from the productive work they were hired to perform.
While this case is a good example of what may be considered a non-compensable activity, it also makes clear that what an employer may deem “integral and indispensable” is fact-specific to the job duties of the employee. If questions arise as to the compensability of a specific job activity, it is best to speak to an employment attorney who can navigate the complexities in this highly contested area of the law.
The Eastern Pennsylvania Employment Log (EPELog) is a publication of the KingSpry Employment Law Practice Group. Jeffrey T. Tucker, Esquire, is our editor-in-chief. EPELog is meant to be informational and does not constitute legal advice.
