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Comment by rtkwe | Hacker News Reader

> In its 2014 ruling in the case, the Supreme Court decided that under a 1947 law that amended the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, companies do not have to pay employees for the time they spend undergoing security checks.

It's a supreme court decision that is allowing Amazon to do this [0].

TL;DR the decision is solely on if the "activities are an intrinsic element of the employee’s primary job duties and one that cannot be skipped" and since they were "hired to retrieve products from warehouse shelves, not to undergo security screenings, and the company could eliminate the screenings altogether without impairing the employees’ ability to complete their work" Amazon/warehouse contractor didn't have to pay for it.

[0] https://www.idfa.org/news-views/headline-news/article/2014/1...

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That makes no sense to me. If the company makes them undergo security screenings, they were hired to undergo security screenings. By this logic, it seems like they could make them do an hour of phone support at the beginning and end of each shift since that’s not what they were hired to do.

Exactly. Let’s change the laws.

I don’t have an opinion on this case, but this may be a useful analogy (and may not; I’m not a lawyer): employees are required to commute to work, but they are not compensated for their commute. There are plenty of jobs, in construction for example, where the job site changes on a regular basis. Some job sites require longer commutes than others. Compensation still doesn’t include commute time.

I don't think commutes are a good analogy here.

The existence and length of a worker's commute isn't Amazon's fault, nor is it under their control.

The existence and length of the security screenings is.

I think you are on the right track. Further amazon is incentivized to save money on security staff even if it costs employees cumulatively hundreds of hours of work since employees wait time is free and individual employees are very replaceable.

And, perhaps most importantly, Amazon derives no benefit from the length of a worker's commute while Amazon derives all of the benefit of employee security (really, theft) screening.

A better analogy might be employees changing into a required uniform, which (I believe) is also exempted, though obviously does not typically take ~25 minutes every day.

> employees are required to commute to work, but they are not compensated for their commute.

Where I live (another country), employers are required to compensate workers for their commute (vale-transporte).

Are workers compensated in proportion to the length of their commute? Is the company able to tell workers how to manage their commute?

> Are workers compensated in proportion to the length of their commute?

The workers are compensated for the tickets to the public transport they use. If they need to use more than one (for instance, taking a bus and then the ferry, or a bus and then the train and then another bus), they will be compensated for all these tickets.

> Is the company able to tell workers how to manage their commute?

AFAIK, when there's more than one public transport route, it's the worker who chooses which route they will use.

Wow. That is the strangest thing that I've read ion a while.

Are employers allowed to take the location of prospective employees' residences into account when deciding to hire or not?

If I lived across the country, would the employer have to pay for daily plane tickets?

> Are employers allowed to take the location of prospective employees' residences into account when deciding to hire or not?

I believe they are.

> If I lived across the country, would the employer have to pay for daily plane tickets?

I don't know anywhere in this country where an airplane is considered public transport, so no (vale-transporte is only for public transport AFAIK).

Here's a better analogy: Imagine your employer requires you to work some night shifts, just to have someone on premises in case "something" happens. You and your employer both agree that often nothing happens, so you can in fact sleep during those night shifts. But your employer says that sleeping on the job is not work and therefore should not be paid.

The European Court of Justice held that the employer is wrong, and if they require you to be on premises, even if sleeping, that's work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landeshauptstadt_Kiel_v_Jaeger (this was related to European laws, of course, not American ones)

I agree that this appears ripe for abuse -> the company could make this process as long and as painful as it wants, and pay no costs for this. Can they simply force employees to waste unlimited amounts of their time?

Not that it is the supreme court's fault, assuming that test is very explicit in the act.

But seriously, could that test be any more absurd? The test should not be "of Amazon could eliminate screenings with out affecting the primary job." It should be if the employee could choose not to participate without it affecting their job.

It's the difference between voluntary and compelled.

> Not that it is the supreme court's fault, assuming that test is very explicit in the act.

Couldn't the Supreme Court declare the test unconstitutional?

On what basis?

Being locked up at work without compensation. I guess the Constitution's "involuntary servitude" wording was meant for other contexts (actual 24/7 slavery), but this still seems like a basic human rights violation. But maybe the US Supreme Court doesn't view itself as a human rights court, so I don't know. That's why I asked.

That simply isn't how the Supreme (or any) court works. Perhaps there is a servitude issue at hand, but that is not the argument that the plaintiff made.

So what you're saying is that this is exactly how the Supreme Court works if someone comes and makes an appropriate argument?

As usual, when involving a Supreme Court case, I'd recommend reading the case directly as they are usually eminently readable. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-433_5h26.pdf

It was a unanimous decision here, because the Portal-to-Portal Act (the 1947 law referenced) has pretty consistently been interpreted both by regulatory bodies and courts in the intervening 70+ years to explicitly exclude such activities from the FLSA. If you want to change this, you definitely need to go to Congress with this.

Looks like there were several precedents and regulatory opinions here covering this exact issue, and the 9th Circuit disagreed with them. SC reversed the 9th circuit to maintain consistency.

Want change? Get Congress to change the law, because the law, as written now, permits this.

> hired to retrieve products from warehouse shelves, not to undergo security screenings, and the company could eliminate the screenings altogether without impairing the employees’ ability to complete their work

Wow. They were hired to do work, not to be locked up for half an hour per day and treated like criminals. Moreover, it is obviously clear that Amazon could just stop locking them up for half an hour per day and treating them like criminals. Therefore Amazon owes them no compensation for locking them up for half an hour per day and treating them like criminals. That is one hell of a Supreme Court ruling.

It’s seems degrading to be subject to this but at the same time the majority of theft is from employees. I’ve hear about these type of precautions at UPS sorting centers. It’s also why cash register security cameras are pointed at the register not where a robber would be in clear view. That said I’m almost certain the UPS employees are paid while doing the screening. That’s a benefit of labor unions.

Indeed. I've worked in electronics and home entertainment retail in the past and been subject to similar checks. The majority of theft is indeed carried out by employees.

I'm not really contesting that security screening might be a necessary part of the job just that it's incredible that they're not getting paid for it.

The Supreme Court ruling is fine. It's Congress' fault it hasn't fixed the law.

hired to retrieve products from warehouse shelves, not to undergo security screenings, and the company could eliminate the screenings altogether without impairing the employees’ ability to complete their work

Am I reading a Dr Seuss book or a Supreme Court decision?

It's a relief to know that the Supreme Court is so fair and even-handed in its treatment of employers and employees!

Talk to Congress about laws, it's their job to change them.

It was the Supreme Court's job to change the laws about abortion and gay marriage and school segregation when Congress obviously messed up or failed to act.

Those are issues about treating people humanely and as equals.

This issue boils down to whether people have to work 8 vs. 9 hours for a certain amount of pay, with some paperwork issues piled on top. It matters but there aren't any human rights involved in any meaningful way. The law isn't inherently invalid.

I bet traffic problems would be solved overnight if employers were required to compensate employees for commute times. It's time to stop giving freebies on people's backs, tbh.

The entire law doesn't need to be invalid. But if it says that your employer can force you to be present without compensation, that part can be inherently invalid.

Define "force".

If you mean "hold you against your will", they can't do that.

If you mean "you have to do it to stay employed", they can.

The question here is how pay is calculated. It's not whether the security checks themselves are a problem.

> The question here is how pay is calculated.

Yes. Specifically, whether your employer can make you do work that they don't define as work and therefore don't pay, even though it has all the characteristics of work: Being where they tell you when they tell you doing what they tell you.

They pay you every two weeks. From a human rights point of view, it doesn't matter the tiniest bit whether a workday is 8 hours at $12 plus .75 hours at $0, or 8.75 hours at $11. So there is no reason for the supreme court to intervene on that basis. The lawmakers are in charge here, and the law won't be inherently invalid.

That's why this is being fought with state law, not the constitution. The federal law is doing something stupid, but the stupidity is mostly an accounting trick. Everyone is still getting paid for their total labor.

From a human rights point of view it absolutely matters if you agree to work 8 hours per day, and your employer agrees to pay you for 8 hours of work per day, but also decides to keep you locked up for some extra unpaid time.

I see we won't agree here, so I'm out.

You're not locked up. You agree to the extra unpaid time as a bundle with the paid time. You can quit any time. And your pay each week is a fair amount.

This source is from another comment in this thread: https://www.idfa.org/news-views/headline-news/article/2014/1...

>The FLSA establishes minimum wage and overtime compensation for the time that employees work over 40 hours in one work week. Congress constructed the Act so that employers are not required to compensate employees for activities that occur before and after shifts unless those activities are integral and indispensable to the work an employee is employed to perform.

The employer will fire you for not doing it. That makes it essential.

Any interpretation of such a law that uses the job description, eg packing and moving boxes, as the be-all-end-all of what is "integral and essential" instead of what the employer will fire or refuse to employ you for not doing is either bought and paid for or anti-labor.

> It's a supreme court decision that is allowing Amazon to do this.

No, it's federal law which allows Amazon to do this.

The Supreme Court's role is not to act as a kind of super-legislature, creating and changing laws at whim: its role is to adjudicate disputes as to what the actual letter of the law requires given the facts of specific cases.

And it looks like Congress was particularly snippy towards their colleagues in the Judicial branch when they passed the law[1] in question:

> The Congress finds that the Fair Labor Standards Act ... has been interpreted judicially in disregard of long-established customs, practices, and contracts between employers and employees, thereby creating wholly unexpected liabilities, immense in amount and retroactive in operation, upon employers with the results that, if said Act as so interpreted or claims arising under such interpretations were permitted to stand, (1) the payment of such liabilities would bring about financial ruin of many employers ...

And that's only the first of ten+ chicken-little scenarios laid out in the Congressional Findings section.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/29/251

I understand this is an unpopular SCOTUS ruling/decision but I don't understand why a comment summarizing and linking to the case is worthy of downvotes? Is something about this comment inaccurate or misleading in some way that I'm missing?

It's called shooting the messenger.

I also imagine that a lot of the people calling for the Supreme Court to make this and other decisions on the basis of whatever feels fair to the individual justices would be a lot less happy if that methodology were applied to various other things.

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