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Comment by MereInterest | Hacker News Reader

> At the end of the day, warehouse employees are required to go through mandatory screening to check they haven't stolen anything, which "requires waiting times that can range from 25 minutes to an hour" and is not compensated, the report said

I'm surprised that the article doesn't also mention the absolute joke of a Supreme Court decision, ruling that Amazon's mandatory security screening does not need to be compensated. Legalized wage theft is what that is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_Staffing_Solutions,_...

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The (unanimous) Supreme Court decision was not a "joke". It was an obvious interpretation of an old New Deal-era law. The problem goes to Amazon and to a broken Congress unable to fix this. It does not go to SCOTUS. If you feel conflicted, go read the ruling[1]. It's a short one.

People need to not judge court decisions solely on whether they think the headline outcome is good or bad. Besides the fact that the actual outcome is frequently more complicated than the headline, the reasoning is just as, if not more, important the outcome. That's the part that constrains future court decisions.

[1]https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-433_5h26.pdf

you make a decent point, but overstate your case. we can respect the precedent-respecting/-setting nature of supreme court decisions, while also holding the supreme court to task for largely ignoring workers interests.

even reading the first few paragraphs, there seemed to be numerous lines of argument the court ignored in this regard. what other complications should we be considering with respect to this otherwise worker-unfriendly decision?

frankly, i'd support the (radical) idea that we should pay non-exempt workers at the start of their departure for work all the way to their arrival at their after-work destination. this has the nice side effect of pulling corporations into the fight against excessive, wasted commute times, sprawl and the housing crisis, and spewing excess toxins into our lungs and the environment.

Courts are supposed to interpret laws, not legislate from the bench.

no, there are many possible interpretations the court could have legitimately put forth, and interpreting law necessarily overlaps with "legislating" it. both are saying what's in and out of bounds.

That people are not required to be paid for activities that are required of them is a joke. Exactly where the setup is might vary, but there definitely is a sad punchline at the end.

Reading through the ruling was interesting, and definitely helped me to decide that the problem wasn't with the Supreme Court's decision, but with the poor protections in place on the Portal-to-Portal Act. I hold with the moral statement that actions performed by the employee, and required by the employer, must be compensated. Since the security screenings were mandatory, it is immoral for the employees not to be compensated.

I read "joke" to refer to our governance model, which is supposed to represent "the people" and not just "the very rich people".

I remember practices similar to this, though less extreme, at a sub-manufacturing plant in the auto industry that I worked at when I was younger.

Some people began to get upset and act against it--ie, shut down their machines early to cover the spread. They received some very hard pushback from supervisors, then management. It blew up into a full-blown unionization campaign, with the Canadian Auto Workers union representatives stationed outside exit streets from the plant meeting with employees as they left for the day to promote their position, and the company electing to hand out anti-union pamphlets, put up anti-union flyers all over the grounds (halls, break rooms, change rooms, plant floor), and host meetings where they would slyly threaten to close the plant and move it away.

It got ugly. And that was over a combined ~30 minutes a day maybe. I'd be pretty upset over being held after work for an hour for a search. (I've had that experience in college working for a major chocolate/candy manufacturer but it never took more than 20 seconds. I still thought that was ridiculous to search our bags for little plastic noisemaker boxes of candy breath mints that couldn't cost more than a few cents).

This goes so against what I previously believed that there must be some critical underlying fact I am missing. Are the facts below correct?

1) This is stating that Amazon requires its warehouse workers to go through a security screening before they can leave at the end of every shift.

2) This daily process takes 25 minutes to 1 hour

3) Employees are NOT paid for this time

4) Employees are hourly and not salary

5) The supreme court UNANIMOUSLY agreed they do not have to be paid for this work.

6) Their reasoning for this is that the security check is not a critical part of the job and could be eliminated.

Those 6 facts either cant be right or I must be missing some critical 7th fact that ties this all together. Can anyone help out?

I haven't been able to figure it out either. My best guess is that the "integral and indispensable" was interpreted from the point of view of an employer, when it should have been interpreted from the point of view of the employee.

Amazon could eliminate the security check entirely with no adverse effects on the employee's work. From Amazon's point of view, it is easily dispensable. The employee's cannot opt out of the security check without being fired. From the employee's point of view, it is entirely indispensable.

Though not stated, I'd guess that there is also an unhealthy amount of efficient market hypothesis thrown in. If I assume that all markets are at equilibrium, then no company would have workers perform unnecessary work, because those workers would then choose to work somewhere that doesn't.

Edit: It may also be that the Court wanted to avoid extending existing law, and instead wanted to point out limitations in it for Congress to then amend. I'd have to read the transcripts in detail there, which I haven't done.

I think the 7th fact is that the Fair Labor Standards Act only requires employees be paid for labor that is "integral and indispensable" to their duties. In hindsight, it really should be something closer to "time spent at the behest of the employer".

> the security check is not a critical part of the job and could be eliminated.

lol, scores of work assignments and whole jobs shouldn't be compensated with this line of reasoning.

Stocking shelves isn't critical. Get rid of the shelves and park the pallets on the floor.

While not identical, the warehouse store model is essentially this, with different examples of execution more or less close to the exactly this.

lol, only if we follow the "sliperry slope" conclusion.

And if we take your comment to its sliperry slope conclusion, then employers could ask for employees to do anything, for any amount of time, unpaid, if they considered it "critical".

The critical seventh fact is that the law is a bad law and should be changed. Apparently it's so bad that even the liberal justices couldn't see their way to interpreting it in favor of the workers, in spite of their demonstrated pattern of favoring the worker in most cases.

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