9th Circuit Rules Apple Owes Retail Workers for Time Spent Security Screening | Hacker News Reader

9th Circuit Rules Apple Owes Retail Workers for Time Spent Security Screening

macrumors.com

219 pointsclairity262 comments

As a teenager, I worked running boardwalk games for a very well known theme park. I don't want to say the name, but let's just say it was one with many flags.

Every day the workflow was as follows:

  1. Sign-in in the employee entrance office.
  2. Get your cash bag from costumes.
  3. Pick up $200 worth of singles from the cash office for making change which both you and the teller would count out.
  4. Go through a security check.
  5. Walkthrough the park from the employee entrance to where your game was (often the other side of the park).

The whole thing took 20 minutes and we would signed-in to start being paid at the next 15 minute interval from when we arrived at our game.

When we checked out, we did the whole process in reverse but would be signed-out for the previous 15 minute interval when we left our game area.

All in all, we were losing 40-68 minutes of wages per day. Worse if there were long lines in the office or costumes or the cash office.

Of course, we were also only paid $6.15 an hour and had to pay union dues out of that, so in total, it didn't add up to much...

>Of course, we were also only paid $6.15 an hour and had to pay union dues out of that, so in total, it didn't add up to much...

Not to you, but it definitely added up to a noticeable amount for your employer.

That's a lot.. an hour a day is 1/8th of your pay. If this was year around, that would be (260 work days) $1600.. out of $12800/year total gross pay for full time.

You say it's not a lot, but that's only because the job doesn't pay a lot and (I assume) it was short term.

As a teenager, I worked at a Kmart. It didn't take too long to be "promoted" to cashier. They never let anyone near the money room without already being on the clock.

You got your till loaded with cash, counted it out, and walked to your register. All on the clock. When done, you took your till back, counted it out, and handed it back in. All on the clock.

I'm only writing this as a counter example - not every place was awful about it.

had to pay union dues out of that

Rhetorical question, but what the hell was the union doing while this wage theft was going on?

Some unions basically 'collect' members by unionizing a bunch of small-medium size companies which are completely separate from their 'main business(es)'; they proceed to basically ignore these members, and just collect dues from them.

Agreed. I worked for a private ambulance company as an EMT and paramedic. We were "represented" by the Teamsters.

Any grievance? Usually resulted in us having to request a steward/rep from multiple counties away, who knew nothing about EMS and had our contract for reference. You would know more about what the issue was or why it was inappropriate that the union rep.

You'd usually have to "pre-game" and explain why a certain thing was appropriate or inappropriate because they were used to representing truck drivers with disputes about haulage, hours, etc., and had no idea about emergency medicine, or DOT provisions for emergency vehicles.

We eventually decertified (or rather, left the union).

It's stunning your union would permit this shit. It's no wonder Americans in general are so sour on unions if this is a representative experience.

Unions are hard because employers can basically do whatever the fuck they want to fight the union and they usually only get the NLRB injunction/penalty months/years later, after everyone originally supporting the action has been removed by the company.

Some unions are also just in the pocket of management. I have friends who are teamster organizers and they've told me some managers in some industries will actually request unions.

> Some unions are also just in the pocket of management.

I honestly believe you on this point, but that is just so crazy that I'd be curious as to the turn of events that would turn out to the union selling out its soul so completely. Unless, of course, that was their intended goal. It just seems so antithetical to the theoretical principles of a union.

I think it's not the union that has sold its soul so much as targeting specific individuals who are important in governing a certain local or something, and getting them to sell out.

See, for instance, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/business/gm-fiat-chrysler...

> General Motors has accused Fiat Chrysler of bribing union officials to get a leg up on G.M. in contract negotiations, contending in a lawsuit that its competitor paid for the union’s negotiating team to have a $7,000 dinner shortly after concluding a labor agreement. Fiat Chrysler has called the suit meritless.

I think many are interpreting my comment as anti-union, which it was not meant to be. Unions can be coopted by management, but better to have some sort of worker council/representation than none at all.

To expand a bit, a union is supposed to be democratic - the workers themselves organize to promote their own interests. But many unions that remain these days have become professionalized. They have their own well-paid administration and lobbyists, and their levers of power are political contributions and signing restrictive long-term contracts with employers.

Here is an article I found that goes into this: https://www.labornotes.org/2002/06/corporatization-unions

> their levers of power are political contributions and signing restrictive long-term contracts with employers.

I'm curious how you think this differs from traditional practices, generally i think of signing security clauses + political influence as basic union 101.

There've always been professional organizers as long as there've been unions. They're hardly "well-paid" by private standards.

Both styles of union have a long history, but the alternative practice is to rely more heavily on strikes and other workplace actions, and less on pay-to-play politics.

It may be "union 101" to sign no-strike clauses but there are unions like the IWW that have always rejected them.

What you need is a union law similar to germany. In germany, when you apply to a job where a union has created a union employee contract (ie, standardized pay, standardized hours & benefits), then you can choose to use that contract even if you are not part of the union and you are entitled to still do your own contract even if you are in the union.

The only time you have to accept certain parts in your contract no choice is if they are mandated by the worker's council, which is voted for democratically by workers from and for a specific company and they can veto anything the company does or demand changes with a 50% share in board votes.

I don't see how this is different from a US union contract, which is approved by the majority of the local.

Generally, the union will not make the dues optional because that is how unions collapse in the US.

I didn't realize you were referring to no-strike contracts, that's not what a security clause is. That is definitely not a good practice always and not union 101.

From what I’ve seen with friends in the amusement industry, the unions don’t really work for them and in some cases are run by the company itself (not directly but with directors that have obvious conflicts).

I’m more ashamed of the legislature that allows this to happen. There’s no reason an employer should not have the pay the minute they expect something of the employee, assuming it’s a position paid per unit of time.

The problem is that you get into things that aren’t part of your duties that are still expected of you. Such as commuting to and from work; It’s necessary to commute, but it’s not part of your duties.

It’s unsettled (in America) what’s the right answer to that, but an argument against it I’ve heard is: if you get a job and the employer agrees to pay for a 10 minute commute twice per shift, but you then move 30 minutes away, why should the employer be on the hook for that extra 20 minutes (40 per shift)?

Commute has pretty much not been on the negotiating table as far as I understand for most positions. The only time I've seen commute being paid is for workers who need to travel to the job site.

Even then it's generally that you travel unpaid to the office, then you are paid for the travel time from there to the job site.

Commuting isn’t expected of you. Being at a certain place at a certain time is. Once you’re there at that time, the clock starts, but I’ve never heard anyone argue that an employer is responsible for your commute.

My point was: if we take the “expected of you” further, someone will argue that we should pay for your commute.

And yes, commuting isn’t expected, but unless you’re living at your job, you have to commute. So, saying “a commute isn’t expected, but being on time is” doesn’t make sense.

Not to mention, there are times where an employer is required to pay for your commute. The biggest is travel that is required to do your job, such as a door-to-door salesperson. That could lead to: if a commute is practically required to do your job (your house to your place of work), why not pay for that?

I personally don’t have an opinion on this; I’m just playing devil’s advocate.

The moment you're at your job is when your clock should start, unless your employer has demanded you do a 2+ hour commute or something. Ie, the moment they control what you do and can order you to do things like putting on a uniform.

And the moment they can no longer do that is when the clock stops, ie once you've finished getting out of uniform and left.

Not to mention the mafia ran most of the powerful unions in America before the feds destroyed that type of organized crime.

I sometimes wonder if despite the brutality of their tactics, did the mafia help the working class more than hurt it?

Over 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year, that's a loss of ~$2000 in 2020 dollars, not counting the dues

Meanwhile, at the Magic Kingdom down in Florida, we would clock in after taking the bus from the employee lot to the main park employee entrance and then get our uniform, get changed, walk to the attraction, etc.

On leaving, we would leave our attraction 20 minutes prior to the end of our shift, walk back, get changed, etc, and then clock out.

Unions matter. I'm shocked that any union would allow off the clock work like that.

How is the conclusion that unions matter when they both had unions?

More likely the cause of the disparity -- because this is actually a difference between the companies -- is that Disney tries to maintain a certain image about the wholesomeness of their enterprise which isn't worth compromising to avoid paying 8% more to workers who still aren't really making altogether that much money, and they also charge enough of a premium to be able to afford it.

Flight attendants have unions but still don't get paid unless the airplane door is closed.

Grew up in a town dictated by a union... they aren’t all good. Watched a lot of people lose their only source of income because they couldn’t reach a unanimous vote during an economic downturn.

One union dictated the entire town?

Just like it is best not to hold romantic notions about corporations, it is also best not to hold romantic notions about unions (which are just another type of corporation), non-profits (same) and bureaucracies in general.

Some unions serve their members very well. Some are leeches. In either case they tend to stick together to raise their political power when possible.

> ... signed-in to start being paid at the next 15 minute interval from when we arrived at our game.

> ... signed-out for the previous 15 minute interval when we left our game area.

This is actually the most surprising thing to me in your story. Usually the laws about rounding in time keeping state that the rounding must go the same direction. So if they round to the next interval on start, they should also be rounding to the next interval on end.

The reason why this is the most surprising part to me, is because that's a pretty cut-and-dry labor violation. Compared to the rest that would have to go through a court case like the one in TFA.

Employers, even large ones, regularly conduct large scale wage theft and nobody fights it.

Truth. God forbid though you steal from the employer. We have collectively allowed the government to approve private prisons for people heinous enough to commit crimes like that.

Huh. I did the exact same job for a competing park, owned by a fair, and we got paid from when we showed up to the main office to when we ended at the main office.

The only unpaid time was the walk to/from the very back of the parking lot to the main office.

> Of course, we were also only paid $6.15 an hour and had to pay union dues out of that, so in total, it didn't add up to much...

I'm half joking but if your union dues were higher you would have been paid for that hour :-P

If only wage theft were pursued as viciously as other forms of theft.... The amount that happens is frankly quite disgusting.

https://i.redd.it/grnr8kxbl6zz.jpg

I’ve seen this chart before, and I believe it, but how is the wage theft number calculated? If employers are underpaying workers, how does one find out how much without a court ruling against the company?

Just the overtime and minimum violations could pay every US citizen a roughly 3000$ sized paycheck.

I worked at Best Buy during college, and if you closed you'd have to wait for a manager to unlock the door for you and check your stuff.

If I had to wait more than a minute or so, I'd fill out a time correction for the time I was spent locked in the building. Anytime someone said anything about it, I said if I'm stuck in the building I'm under the company's control, so I should be paid. Eventually managers just started getting there faster when I paged them.

A while later Best Buy was sued for this and lost.

Reminds me of reading an article talking about how Walmart used to lock people in who worked the night shift like stocking shelfs. Seems like Walmart was doing this in the early 2000s, there's an article from 2004 in the New York Times. Didn't know that there was a similar thing at Best Buy, wonder what year that was.

I worked for Best Buy (Geek Squad) as well, about 12 years ago. I had the same experience. Even if they were going to pay me for the time, it felt wrong that they told me I was not able to leave. At times you could be waiting for 15 minutes. It was my first job at 16 years of age, and I didn't have the care or confidence to correct the time punch. At my store they would have to approve time punch modifications, so it would have been obvious if you did that every night.

The one person who did get fired for stealing was simply grabbing laptops, removing them from their box, and casually walking out with them.

The fact that Apple let this go to court is disappointing.

Apple should do the right thing here, even if they are not legally obligated.

Pay retail employees for all work which is required of them. Do not dither over trivialities.

I posted a similar sentiment but you've highlighted the key point. It's (slightly) understandable that this was company policy as it was probably decided somewhere down the food chain.

But at the point it became a court case, red lights should have been flashing at the highest levels that this was the kind of thing that paints the company in a terrible light.

This is proper "don't be evil" territory. Don't be the bad guys, the cardboard cutout evil capitalists.

Nobody on the board thought this was a bad look?

>This is proper "don't be evil" territory.

It's a bad look, for sure, but common in high end retail.

Proper evil territory featuring cardboard cutout evil capitalists looks more like this:

>Google, facing an advertising slump caused by the pandemic, has rescinded offers to several thousand people who had agreed to work at the company as temporary and contract workers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/technology/google-rescind...

Maybe I'm really way more removed from tech than I thought, but isn't there a difference?

Apple: Not paying you for mandated time spent at work for the employers benefit.

Google: Cuts temporary and contract workers because of budget problems.

What makes the first regular retail action, and the second evil? Because I would argue that both, while garbage, are, in-fact, pretty standard things that bad people do. Contract and temp employees are the first to go when times get bad. That's true across industry, correct? What am I missing?

>What am I missing?

If Google can hand a $90 million dollar bonus payment to Andy Rubin after they investigate him for sexual assault on a subordinate and ask him to leave the company, they can afford to pay a few contract employees.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-...

Apple has continued to pay it's contract employees who aren't able to work under current conditions.

> Apple has continued to pay it's contract employees who aren't able to work under current conditions.

So have Google, Facebook, Twitter:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/06/coronavirus-google-facebook-...

Of course I still understand the frustration with the some thousand people who were denied jobs after they made it all the way through the funnel, but it's still not the same thing.

Again, if Google can afford to hand a ninety million dollar bonus to a supervisor who they fire for sexually assaulting a subordinate, they can certainly afford to live up to the job offers they make to the little people.

Or is this suddenly not about what's right, when we're talking about Google?

Apple paying people for all the time they are required to be present for their shift is certainly what's right, even in districts where doing so has not yet been legally mandated, correct?

You said:

> Apple has continued to pay it's contract employees who aren't able to work under current conditions.

This implies that Google is not doing so, which is untrue. Please stop trying to change the subject.

Given that I linked to articles describing the exact behavior I am criticizing (screwing over people in a global pandemic after offering them a job, and paying a ninety million dollar bonus to a high level executive when he is being fired for sexually assaulting a subordinate) I'm not implying anything.

I'm criticizing specific behaviors that I find to be more in line with the notion of "cardboard cutout evil capitalists".

But with shitty stuff like this you don't want to be the company that loses the case.

Apple needs a new HR director

This seems like a fundamental mistunderstanding of why a business of Google's size keeps around temporary and contract workers. One of the specific benefits is having a group of people that can be reduced without having actual layoffs ("actual" as in legal definition). If Google wasn't going to do this and pay them regardless of the need for them, they never would have hired them as temporary or contract workers in the first place.

Disagree, as Apple, it is in their best interest to fight this.

For apple, employee are expenses, reducing expense and increasing profit is what a company should do.

...was it worth the legal costs?

By this logic they might as well try not paying their employees at all and letting that go to court too.

(To clarify, it's not that I necessarily think there's anything particularly egregious about the original practice since it seems commonplace, but the replyee's sentiment that they should've just given in is absolutely correct.)

If they won, yes.

>By this measure they might as well try not paying their employees at all and letting that go to court too

If they can figure out the way to do that, they should.

No, no they should not. I am not going to argue with this.

edit: Also, "if they won" -- that's an assumption that is already false. If you just disregard risk all the time, you go out of business.

Not saying to disregard risk. Of course the cost vs benefit analysis have to be done.

OK, but you also shouldn't disregard ethics. Even if you have the most egregiously simplified view of capitalism, disregarding ethics continuously can catch up with you. Plus, there are plenty of other reasons to not short-change your employees. Your employees are.. You. They're your company. If you try to skimp on paying your employees, they will find ways to return the favor. Trust me, I worked in retail.

Not saying to disregard ethics.

>you try to skimp on paying your employees, they will find ways to return the favor.

That would be included in the cost/risk part. If the cost/risk of skimp on paying your employees < benefit then they should do it.

Looking at the world through the lens of only corporate cost/benefit and essentially disregarding externalities feels unwise. You could always just follow the rules as they were intended to be followed, not end up in the news, not pay court fees, and have happier employees, regardless of if your bottom line will technically better at year-end. (I know roughly ~nobody actually does this, but wishful thinking.)

Regardless, at this point you seem to basically be saying, "They should do it, unless it's not worth it." Everyone else is saying "It's not worth it, and that's why they should not do it."

> Regardless, at this point you seem to basically be saying, "They should do it, unless it's not worth it." Everyone else is saying "It's not worth it, and that's why they should not do it."

Some people are also saying "whether it'd be worth it or not, they should not do it."

> If they won, yes.

They didn't though. So maybe the shareholders should sue Apple for not working in their interests?

If, as you say, Apple is required to maximize shareholder value, or whatever, then this seems like an excellent example of them failing to uphold that.

This was an obviously stupid decision on Apple's part.

Please don't give them any ideas.

“ By this logic they might as well try not paying their employees at all and letting that go to court too”

They would totally do that if they thought they could get away with it.

Not from an optics POV companies don't want to be the plaintiff in high profile cases like this.

> reducing expense and increasing profit is what a company should do.

Who said that?

There is a bizarre school of thought that goes as follows: The company has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders, which forces the company to do anything and everything to maximize profits at all costs. Anyone working for the company who fails to do this can be sued by shareholders for violating their fiduciary duty.

Of course this is nonsense. As far as I can tell, "fiduciary duty" simply prevents self-dealing and other unethical behavior by company employees. Such as, for example, a VP selling company-owned real estate to his brother for $1, and saying "well it seemed like a reasonable price".

You aren't required by corporate ethics to be maximally unethical especially when it contravenes the law. Being perceived as unethical towards your workforce can furthermore hurt recruiting meaning that after you have begun following the letter and spirit of the law per the courts mandate, even after you pay off the extortionate lawyers,, you now eat higher expenses to acquire and retain a competent workforce.

Its not the best thing for the corp or for the workers. Its a stupid decision.

>You aren't required by corporate ethics to be maximally unethical especially when it contravenes the law

agree, I don't expect corporate to be maximally unethical, rather I expect them to be maximally profitable.

>Being perceived as unethical towards your workforce can furthermore hurt

Agree, but if they can find a way to minimize that perception so that the risk doesn't overweight the benefit then they should.

You are aware that the business judgement rule[0] allows company directors wide latitude in how they run the company, right? I understand expecting companies to make strong efforts to be as profitable as possible, but there is literally no need to do so at the expense of both employees and the company's public image. Rather than trying to "minimize that perception," the simplest way to deal with this type of scenario is to just not do the bad thing.

---

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_judgment_rule

>but there is literally no need to do so at the expense of both employees and the company's public image

Thats depends, if the goal is maximal profitability and the cost/risk doing that is minimal then they should do it.

Good employees are an ASSET, and treating employees shabbily jeopardizes your chances of hiring the best ones.

I earnestly hope that you are not in a position to hire employees, and that you never reach such a position without developing a better ethical sense and maybe some empathy.

In practice, your approach seems like it would result in very poor employee performance due to them not feeling valued, but the world is a weird place, and it might take some time before reality catches up.

If I'm the employee I too would fully expect company to do this kind of thing.

Meanwhile As employee I would try to do the same but in the opposite: to extract as much as possible (money/knowledge/whatever) from the company while minimizing my effort as much as possible.

I'm conflicted about the decision for a few reasons:

1. The "off-the-clock" mandates came from individual managers, not from Apple corporate so Apple corporate should have addressed that immediately. Unless that's been changed recently, this could have been nipped in the bud from the start.

2. The store policies do outline that personal bags must be inspected before employees leave the store but it doesn't mention anything about whether that needs to be done after they've clocked out. I used to work with/in an Apple Store and even we were required to do this but it was always done before we clocked out for the day. I know the article says that employees were required to clock out prior to the bag check but that was not my experience.

3. Retail employees should absolutely have been paid by those managers if they were mandating this and it should never have gone to court in the first place. The decision is right but I feel like most of the costs are going to go to lawyers and that rubs me the wrong way.

4. Policies also spelled this out before employees came into the stores. If I knew I wasn't getting paid for this, I feel like I'd be less inclined to bring a bag with me. Not sure if that's right but it feels like there should have been some pushback from employees to higher-level people. It sounds like an HR issue from the get-go.

Managers are generally considered to be agents of the company, so, their actions can legally incur liability on the company. I don't find it that hard to believe that individual store managers might do this, but that word of the practice might not make it up to corporate. This explanation is simple and plausible enough to me that I'm inclined to think it's probably exactly what had been happening.

That's likely how things started. Retail management was hired from other stores (e.g. Burberry), and followed their preexisting understanding of appropriate legal policy.

But at some point the issue went up the food chain. Corporate had many opportunities to step in and make things right before the suit reached the 9th Circuit.

>their actions can legally incur liability on the company

Of course. I agree 100% on this point. I'm just skeptical when articles like this frame the issue as this being some evil plan by Apple to not pay their employees. Apple treats their employees better than 99% of the companies out there (Gravity Payments is an obvious exclusion for me) and, while they're not perfect, it's obvious to me that this article is just banking on anti-Apple sentiment. The reality is far more boring and I feel like this went to a class-action suit too quickly. If higher-ups at Apple had been notified that this was happening, I feel like they would have made it right (at least based on my experience).

Right. I can absolutely imagine how midlevel management created this issue, under complicated circumstances (employee variability, store level theft issues, time clocks, performance measurements, standard retail practices, etc)

And sure, not being paid for screening time does disincentivize the bringing of bags (although in a somewhat gender-discriminatory way -- males would have fewer issues than females). Reducing the number of bags to screen reduces the workload of the screener, and reduces the chance that something will be missed, which is clearly a benefit to the company.

But at some point, someone at the CxO level has to step in and do the right thing for employees and for the company. Apple's brand is damaged by this practice, and by this lawsuit, regardless of the decision.

>Apple's brand is damaged by this practice, and by this lawsuit, regardless of the decision.

Agreed, if it's determined that they didn't act appropriately. The fact that they were already absolved once, though, makes me feel like there are details being left out. To me, it just comes off as overzealous managers trying to prevent theft by ensuring that employees aren't heading back to the back to room after their bags get checked.

If Apple was previously absolved by the legal interpretation that an employer is only responsible for paying employees for productive work, then I do not consider their actions appropriate.

But it's also quite true that lawyers salivate at the prospect of a suit getting to class status, and make no earnest effort to settle for damages and policy changes on behalf of their putative clients.

And of course, Apple is a juicy target. If Apple attempted the former legal defense in response to the latter vampiric offense, then its pigs and mud all the way down.

> The decision is right but I feel like most of the costs are going to go to lawyers and that rubs me the wrong way.

Please be aware that this attitude is being deliberately nurtured by big businesses to erode support for class-action lawsuits (much like the McDonald's hot coffee controversy was deliberately and loudly misrepresented to make people cynical towards perfectly-justified personal injury suits).

Class-action suits are not supposed to make injured parties whole, that has never been the point; they are supposed to function as an expensive deterrent to bad behavior. But businesses would rather they go away entirely, so they want to make people angry at "those wily lawyers getting rich instead of the little guy". It's just as disingenuous and disgusting as attacking defense attorneys for "sticking up for bad guys".

Reasonable people can reasonably disagree on the merits of the hot coffee case. I've read extensively on it and my personal read is that it's an absurd judgement, mostly emotionally-driven, due to a sympathetic plaintiff and an unsympathetic defendant.

tl;dr writeup I did here the last time this came up on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23482931

That aside, you're absolutely right on the purpose of class actions. Generally the cause of action for individual case members is prohibitively small anyways. It's to form big legal sticks to beat misbehaving companies with, not to make the injured parties (whose injuries are usually pretty small in your average class action) whole.

>this attitude is being deliberately nurtured by big businesses to erode support for class-action lawsuits

While this may be true that's not my issue with this. I know that class-action suits are not meant to make injured parties whole but that's exactly what I take issue with. The fact that a company can essentially pay away its mistakes, when most are knowingly made, is a direct result of the lawyers. I can't help but think of Fight Club - if the cost to change the offending process/product is more than the cost of potential lawsuits, the change isn't made. While that's good business, it's immoral and wrong.

> a company can essentially pay away its mistakes

It would be hard to find a company or person that actually does something without breaking any laws. Not caring about less relevant things and then possibly paying some fines seems an integral requirement of current legal and social systems, not a result of lawyers or courts.

Mistakes, omissions or wilful ignorance w.r.t. less serious matters - not immoral or wrong IMO.

Knowledgeable intentional transgressions (not a mistake) or mistakes with serious, dangerous matters - bad, sometimes very very immoral and wrong.

Apple has a bit of a "never give a single inch" strategy to the bad things that it does.

No matter how wrong it is (and, such as this case, where they lost in court), they will fight it to the very end.

It's quite bizarre, especially when you consider how inefficient Apple stores are to begin with. They're intended as much for marketing, brand awareness, and a display of gluttony via the impressive modern construction that invites parallels to their premium products and manufacturing quality, as they are for actually selling products. They have way more employees working than they'd need if they just had normal retail workflows with check-out counters (and are also more frustrating to navigate as a customer). They even include entire mini-auditoriums to put on free events, weird seminars and panels and even concerts that nobody asked for.

But making sure employees aren't paid while they wait to be able to leave is a critically important cost-saving measure and worth going to court over?

Will this also apply to the California Supreme Court ruling that Amazon won back in 2013?

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/business/supreme-court-ru...

Judging by this quote, there’s a good chance SCOTUS overturns a ruling on this topic by the 9th circuit a second time.

> Justice Thomas disagreed, saying the appeals court had “erred by focusing on whether an employer required a particular activity.” The right test, he said, was whether the activity “is tied to the productive work that the employee is employed to perform.”

Maybe the 9th will overturn en blanc before it reaches SCOTUS.

That’s a very silly viewpoint. If I have to travel to the North Pole to change a lightbulb, should I only get paid for changing the lightbulb? If the security screening takes 9h, would we really expect employees not to be paid? If so, these would be pretty terrible job arrangements.

Furthermore, this would open the door to Apple making any time consuming and unreasonable demands. This ia rife for abuse.

It's based on the wording of a 1947 law, maybe it's time to change that law. I can see the need for clarity here though. Should employers pay their workers for time spent commuting to a job site/office? Can I live three hours away and make a cool 6 hours of extra wages listening to audio books on my way to/from work?

Well, maybe, maybe not, but once you're on the job site, you're entitled to be paid for whatever the employer decides to do with you, like security screenings.

Yes they should be expected to pay for that, it's your time that you can't use for whatever you want because now you have to spend it getting to work. I think it would have to be limited to something reasonable, but yes, unequivocally your employer should be on the hook for that. I believe I should be paid for the imposition on my time.

I also think that forcing hourly people to take a 30 minute unpaid lunch needs to be fixed, I absolutely hated the one job I've had where this was enforced. I would have much rather just worked a straight 8 hours so I wasn't robbed of 30 minutes of my life every day.

Both of these are hard to fix and I don't know how to implement it, but they definitely should be.

For commuting to their regular workplace? No. If an employee chooses to live three hours away from the office, that's their problem.

What if an employer chooses to be located three hours away from the nearest affordable housing?

Then don't take the job.

They would be pretty terrible job arrangements. Although I'd point out that a non-trivial number of people have 3 or 4 hours of commuting a day. Now, you can argue that this is optional and perhaps it is to some degree. Nonetheless a lot of people spend work-related time that's not on the clock.

I think they should get paid for this time too.

But... I think that the general idea that the court system upholds is that the employee is free to get a different job if they don't like the unpaid portion of their work. And if it is hard to get new employees to agree to unpaid work, then the employer will either start paying or they will increase the wages to make up for it.

Maybe so, but it encourages employers to find ways to circumvent minimum wage laws. An sufficiently creative employer could find ways to have employees on-site for 8 hours per day, but only classify 4 of those 8 hours as paid work and find excuses why the remaining 4 hours are off the clock. E.g. setting things up, putting tools away, doing paperwork, etc.

If you are the facility manager for a location in the north pole, you wouldn't get paid for travel time to your place of employment.

Bear in mind this is a devil's advocate argument - I think they likely should be paid.

But there are plenty of places where pay is weird - airline flight attendants for example are paid door close to door open - boarding, offloading, waiting in the airport security lines, waiting at the airport for delayed flights, are all mostly unpaid.

The thinking being is that their substantially higher per hour pay makes up for it and it - and I'm sure Apple will make a similar argument.

I would bet airport workers - or the people working the dunkin donuts in the food court - aren't paid for the time it takes to get through TSA either.

Flight attendants aren't paid all that much. At the majors it seems to be around $25-30/hr. (And presumably less on the regional jets).

So uh, for the most part, $50-$60k/year is a middle class income, and depending on where you live, can be upper middle class (in the US, in USD; in Canada the numbers are lower in CAD).

For the vast majority of workers in North America, $25-$30/ hour is well paid. Many people buy houses and raise families in households with one middle class income and one lower income.

> $50-$60k/year is a middle class income,

It's perhaps a middle income income, but its not an income that is typical of the middle class (petit bourgeoisie).

this is needless hairsplitting. I doubt you can find two people who agree on exactly what "middle class" means. some people use class as a direct proxy for income. for others class might be tied to the way you make money (hourly wage, salary, or returns from capital), level of education, and/or "lifestyle".

the wikipedia page for "petit bourgeoisie" lists the following as examples:

* Successful small business owners.

* Middle managers in the service sector (middle management).

* Lawyers working in small partnerships.

* Private GP practices.

depending how successful "successful" is here, the first and second examples could be people making $50-60k in a low-mid COL area. I don't think most people would consider a lawyer to be middle class (maybe upper-middle), and I definitely don't think they would consider a doctor with their own practice to be middle class.

(1) you're assuming a 40hr work week (2) median household income in the USA is about $56k.

Assuming they're paid for 40 hours a week. The parent was pointing out that flight attendants spend a lot of time hanging around airports that they're not usually compensated for.

I'm not arguing it's a bad job. Historically, it was seen as a somewhat exotic see-the-world job for young people. (And at least the Asian carriers sort of enforced that.)

It’s a terrible income considering how much time you have to devote to it, starting when you leave the house. $50-$60k when you come home everyday at a set schedule and get to see your kids and have dinner with the family is different than $50k-$60k where you spend almost all the time traveling and getting an extra dose of solar radiation.

I’m sure it’s a great job for single and younger people who might want those trade offs, but it sucks overall.

You get a lot of perks though - free meals, free flights, free hotel stays, etc. It might be an extra $25k yearly for the perks of being a drink server/babysitter at FL300

You get those perks, but you’re also not seeing your family.

I know 3 flight attendants and they are quintessential perennial bachelor(ettes). Two of them fly SF-NY all the time and have friend groups in both cities.

> If you are the facility manager for a location in the north pole, you wouldn't get paid for travel time to your place of employment.

That's because you can control where you live, and thus, control how long it takes you to travel to your place of employment.

As an employee, you can't control how long the security screenings take, or what other 'non-productive' bullshit your job expects you to do.

> That's because you can control where you live, and thus, control how long it takes you to travel to your place of employment.

even this isn't exactly clear-cut. lots of people that work in expensive areas can't afford to live within a 20-30 minute commute distance.

Maybe the right test hasn't been applied yet. If one is at work say at a burger place, and were working as a cashier, then need to go back to do food prep and need to wash your hands, are you suddenly off the clock while washing your hands? Are you working the whole time? If you travel to your work, and get in line at work to get security screened or wash your hands why would it be different in the middle than at the start of the day?

Why do you think that one-sentence quote from the dissent makes it likely the SCOTUS would overrule this? I mean, what makes you think a Supreme Court majority would agree that that is the correct test?

You are completely correct! I misread the start of the sentence. Too late to fix it now.

State law vs federal law. Amazon case was a matter of federal law so it would not govern here.

That was a U.S. Supreme Court ruling and not a California Supreme Court ruling. The plantiffs in that case were not all workers in CA and the case was based around the federal portal to portal law. This decision is based upon California state law and involves only employees in California for which state law would apply.

Always amazing to see how things are decided by tiny reading of the English language. The law states…

Hours worked’ means the time during which an employee is subject to the control of an employer, and includes all the time the employee is suffered or permitted to work, whether or not required to do so

The lower court read that as "hours worked is the time under employer control where the employee can work whether they do it or not". The supremes cut that into two statements at the ", and" and made "subject to the control of the employer" stand alone in addition to when they could be made to work.

By definition the supremes are correct, but the judges that ruled the other way are also very experienced judges.

Also important… Apple (probably accidentally) forfeited the "de minimis" argument which says employees don't have to be paid for small, incidental periods of time off the clock. I was expecting this case to be a declaration on reasonable "de minimis" requirements. Instead we got a sentence diagramming exercise.

> The lower court read that as "hours worked is the time under employee control where the employee can work whether they do it or not". The supremes cut that into two statements at the ", and" and made "subject to the control of the employer" stand alone in addition to when they could be made to work.

(1) I think you meant "time under employer control"?

(2) Are you suggesting the lower court just ignored the "is suffered" part?

1 - thanks, fixed.

2 - the lower court appears to have used the back half of the sentence as describing the components of the first half.

Given the supremes’ reading, the back half doesn’t need to even be there, though I guess if you can conceive of someone working for a company but not subject to the control of the company it would cover some ground. Heaven knows I’ve had employees like that.

2 - But if the circuit court used the back of the sentence to read the first half, time going through security screening would've seemed like a pretty obvious example of time that the employee "is suffered", right?

My understanding was that's not what happened though. See page 7 for the summary of the district court's reasoning.

Are you saying "is suffered" stands alone? What does that mean? I read it as "is suffered to work", meaning the employee is allowed to work, which in this case it sounds like it might not apply.

Yes. I understand to "be suffered" here means "to be made to go through something unpleasant/undesired/etc."... which is what a security check is. The point I take being that if you make employees "suffer", you can't use their inability to perform work during that time as an excuse not to pay them. (Note the word in between is "or", not "to".)

That's not my understanding of "be suffered".

"He suffers a loss" means a man is suffering a loss. The loss is hurting him.

"A loss is suffered" means someone/something is suffering a loss. The loss his hurting someone/something.

"The employee is suffered" means someone/something is suffering the employee. The employee is hurting someone/something.

Your definition would match "the employee suffers", but that's the opposite of "the employee is suffered".

> "The employee is suffered" means someone/something is suffering the employee. The employee is hurting someone/something.

Huh, interesting. How does this make sense in context though? The text says "all the time the employee is suffered or permitted to work" must be compensated, so you're saying the law says that an employee must get paid for all the time he spends doing either of {hurting someone/something, being permitted to work}? Why would there be a law to mandate paying employees that hurt people...?

Atleast where I love, when you're not permitted to work you can sue the employer, since you have a right and obligation to fullfill your side of the contract just as the employer has a right and obligation to fullfill theirs. Not being able to work would be a contractual violation suffered by the employee.

This makes sense, but I don't understand how this relates to my comment unfortunately. If anything it would suggest my prior interpretation of "is suffered" was correct? At least I don't see how this translates into an employee hurting someone else.

I think they're using an alternate definition of "suffer".

> 4 : to allow especially by reason of indifference

>> the eagle suffers little birds to sing

> — William Shakespeare

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suffer

So "is suffered" would actually just be a synonym for "is permitted" in this case. So essentially "is suffered" could be removed with no change in meaning, since "is permitted" is already in the law. As for why lawmakers decided to insert what appears to be a useless and confusing synonym, I'm not sure.

Oh interesting! Thank you!

Good. It’s not a part of their commute, and it’s required to start/end working. So, just fricking pay them.

Yeah, the Amazon ruling never made sense to me. If your employer is restricting what you can do with your time (I.e. wait for a security screen before leaving work) then they need to pay you for that time.

It's not so much what makes sense - I think the vast majority, if not everyone, on HN would agree that it makes sense to pay an employee if they are required to perform a particular time-consuming security screening while on the work site as part of their job. The question is, what does the law say - and, rather than have judges go against the law, and do what they think makes sense, the proper approach is to change the law.

Entirely fair. The court needs to rule based on what's in the law, not what's fair (unless it's clearly unconstitutional). Fair is the responsibility of legislators.

Article II, section 2: The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;

Now, this particular suit was presumably brought to court on a legal rather than equitable basis, but courts are in fact empowered to consider cases on the latter basis.

“The question is, what does the law say“

Correct. In the end the US needs better laws to protect workers. It’s not good that basic things like this need to be decided by the court. Seems that’s in line with the general trend that congress leaves more and more decisions up to the courts instead of clarifying the laws.

Equity stands on equal footing with law in the Constitution, and is often more efficient. Specific performance in paying the back wages and and injunction against further shenanigans is an equally viable approach.

It's worth reflecting on the fact that people on the more powerful side of asymmetrical contract relationships are often motivated to do whatever they can get away with, and the absence of a sufficiently specific law is often treated as a license to shift a cost burden onto the weaker party. The problem with your approach is endless multiplication, specification, and complexity of law, which drives up the cost of getting into a legal dispute for everyone.

The problem with the opposite approach is "legislating from the bench", which leads to legal uncertainty and comes with plenty of its own problems. That complexity you mentioned doesn't go away, it just gets shifted into case law instead of statutory law.

Law isn't complex just for the benefit of lawyers.

It makes you wonder. Why isn't commute included? At the very least, shouldn't it be compensated 50% since it is activity done partly for work while not work itself?

A lot of companies put up money for transit costs, but the transit time is a function of where the employee lives, which is something the employer has zero control over.

Well, there's always the option to provide slave pens, err i mean corporate housing..

This should have been an open-and-shut case, its unbelievable that it took years to re-affirm established norm that employees must be paid for their time, no matter what the firm decides to waste it on. So don't waste it.

Like many people, I worked retail. I never got angry at the security guy trying to let me out the door, but it was frustrating to wait 5 minutes here and there unpaid.

I agree that people should be paid for that time.. but I'm also curious where the line is drawn? I left the city to work on a small town because my commute 5 miles/day was 15-20 hours/week. I suppose you can argue many jobs pay well enough to cover that... But people also work retail in those areas.

An ideal solution would be to spread out the cities -- encourage more remote working (though not like we currently see)... But in lieu of that, where is the limit?

Is employee parking, which is a 5 minute walk to the back of the lot, covered? I had a friend that works at a car factory... If you don't drive that manufacturers car, you park in lot B, an extra minute or three away. Is that any different then being forced to stand at the for to leave a few minutes now and then? (It's not always 5-15 minutes, where this example is a constant).

Please accept this as a thought experiment... Not a criticism against better pay for retail. Everyone deserves the pursuit of happiness.

In your example you keep saying 5m as though thats the industry standard sla for security. Thats probably fine. The problem is that if the time is unpaid, theres no balancing force to get people through the queue. If you have to spend more on security guards to get the median time to check someone down to 5m, why would you do it if you dont have to?

My average wait time was less than a minute.. though on a few years days i'd wait 5 minutes or more. I don't disagree with you... Just curious where people think the line is drawn. I personally look at this from the other side -- if we were more accepting of remote work, would cities be so large? Traffic so bad?

But obviously, that's not today... So should the Starbucks employee be paid for their commute time? Is it their choice to drive 45 minutes to work? Or is that a mandated job function by applying? What if they were transferred? It's no longer the employee choice, but a business requirement to work there.

Like I said, thought experiment. I agree, paying for the time created incentive, probably a good thing.

If your job requires you to do something, yes it should be paid. Including walking from your car, at some reasonable pace.

I've had this same thought before, but where do you draw the line? Should employers compensate employees for time spend showering? Can employees sue for wrongful termination if they refuse to maintain personal hygiene for free? It's a ridiculous example, but somewhere between there and being compensated for performing a function lies the answer.

The limit, legally, is pretty cut and dry: commute time is not paid, anything on site is. If you have to wait in line for security, that's paid. If it takes 10 minutes to count out your till at the end of a cashier shift, that's paid. If you're sent to another location in the middle of the day, time getting there from your normal place of work is paid.

There are a small handful of edge cases that vary by state (e.g., if you have to change into a uniform when you get to work, that's considered on-the-clock in California, but not federally), but not many.

Exactly!

There is a reason why factories put their punch clock AT THE DOOR.

Workers leave their assigned areas, pass through security, proceed to the punch clock and exit the facility.

Apple is one of the wealthiest companies in the world. The cost of adding an additional security guard and letting their employees exit from the rear of each store is negligible.

Not negligible for the person responsible for that facility. Someone with a VP title is given a budget and freedom to run the shop and optimize expenses. Soon that VP realises that moving the punch clock inside the facility saves 3 millions a year and he gets to pocket half. Unfair, but legal. And if he doesn't pocket the easy money, he will be seen as incompetent by his manager - an SVP.

Last line shows it is a company issue not individual. Think if some VP in Google recommends reducing free beverages inside company to shitty cola only it will not be accepted by higher ups. If your VP/SVP/CFO are reading only number and not the text line attached to it and its implications it is a culture issue.

In this example with Google, the higher ups might reject this idea, but only because the measure would have a net negative impact on their own bonuses: pulling the cheap drinks would make 0.3% of employees move and the execs won't get bonuses because retention rate is a metric the company owners look at.

I see execs as a blind force of nature that does everything possible to enrich itself within the constraints set by higher ups. If the company owner hires an exec and gives him a task "give me more liquid assets by end of year no matter what", the exec will liquidate the company, because the constraints were loose. Same with those sleazy VPs running the facilities: SVPs set very loose constraints (likely intentionally), and got the rather expected result.

> Unfair, but legal.

Apparently, not.

OK, not quite legal, but justifiable. Nobody goes to prison for that, and the saved 10 mil get a nice house for that exec.

No, not justifiable. Illegal. Rich people blatantly stealing from poor people. Wage theft is more common in the United States than all other types of theft combined, and we shouldn't normalize it. It's criminal, and it's morally despicable.

How do you feel about "employee parking" being an extra minute or two away? That time adds up to... And it's virtually the same thing -- ”company policy mandatees you ___"...

I agree with everything you're staying, but add I said, this is a thought experiment... What would be a good line to draw?

Unless the company policy mandates that you drive to work, and further mandates that you then use their parking, then that sounds a lot like commute time to me. If the hypothetical company decided to not offer parking to its employees, and they had to park a 15 minute walk away on the street, that would certainly be commute time.

Whatever terms the corporate and unions agree on?

> How do you feel about "employee parking" being an extra minute or two away?

What about arguing the converse, which is not at all hypothetical in my case (this is a change that happened to me): an employee commutes to work via public transport and the stop the employee uses is a straight-line path to the front door of the employee's work location through an open area owned by the employer.

The employer then constructs a parking lot on that open area and places a fence around it so that only people assigned to that parking area may use it.

Now, the employee--who does not drive and thus does not have access to the parking lot--is required (by the employer, who owns the property and assigns the employee to a building and does not permit the employee access to the parking lot) to walk an additional three minutes from the public transit stop to the front door of the employee's building. Employees who drive to work are now positioned closer to the front door.

Do the people who drive now take a pay cut because they spend less time getting from commute vehicle to the front door of the office building? Does the employee who uses public transport get a raise?

> What would be a good line to draw?

Parking is a convenience, a benefit as such. Your responsibility is to arrive at the entrance, ready for work on time (or clock in). When someone from the company prohibits you from entry to clock in or leave on time, that is on the company.

Another aligned argument here, could be that the closet food restaurant is 20 minutes away and you have 60 minutes for lunch. It is not the companies responsibility to make sure you make it there and back in 60 minutes, you account for traffic, ordering time, eating time etc. But if the company stops you at the door with a security guard for 10 minutes, before you can go get your lunch, and when you enter back from lunch then it's their problem.

> Your responsibility is to arrive at the entrance, ready for work on time (or clock in).

This seems circular, like saying you shouldn't get paid for working on a project at home because you agreed to be responsible for completing the project at home. In both cases it is a task that requires time and effort, which you are doing for the company's benefit, not your own.

Ultimately these factors are included in the employee's mind when they seek and negotiate for jobs. All things being equal, you take the job with shorter commute and same pay because the commute is part of the job in your mental calculation. You can also negotiate for more pay to offset a long commute.

> Ultimately these factors are included in the employee's mind when they seek and negotiate for jobs. All things being equal, you take the job with shorter commute and same pay because the commute is part of the job in your mental calculation. You can also negotiate for more pay to offset a long commute.

There are many choices at play here, some may even may live further away to offset the cost of living or have a bigger back yard etc. I am sure that many do this in the cities.

But all things being equal if you are wage earner, you generally get paid by the hour and thus time spent at work at the companies need or request, should be paid for. If you cannot leave your job on time, then you should be paid for that time.

Some things are just inflexible in any workplace, both from an employee's and an employer's perspective, and a legal one.

Now those fortunate people who are salary earners, they get to negotiate a little more. However generally (unless they have a flexible agreement), there is still hours of work which are committed to.

All others like contractors etc fall into a different pile.

> Some things are just inflexible in any workplace, both from an employee's and an employer's perspective, and a legal one.

They're just shifted from official numbers to some form of hidden cost. The economic situation is the same. I'm presuming no one at the apple store actually makes minimum wage, so ultimately Apple will counter an increase in hours clocked by a reduction in hourly pay. Though I'd expect them to be sneaky about it.

The cutoff for reporting hourly wage is something like $47k. Everyone either negotiates directly or else affects the wage indirectly by not competing for the job (requiring the company to offer more to attract employees). Companies give regular raises to their wage workers for completely rational self-serving reasons. And obviously a business wants to employ from a larger (and therefore better) pool of potential employees beyond those who live on the same block. Common sense says people are going to consider the cost of the commute (both in time and money) when considering the gross income they would get from the job. So for everyone apart from minimum wage workers, there's still some overall average component of pay based on how much people think the commuting part is worth.

The pay outside the hourly rate for a given employee should be total employee commute time (factoring in extra minutes for employee parking lot, etc) minus total commute time for a non employee from the same starting point (they can park wherever, etc), plus any time the employee is delayed before/after clocking in/out (waiting in line to clock in, security checks, etc).

As soon as someone steps foot (or tire) on the premises, the clock starts ticking.

> As soon as someone steps foot (or tire) on the premises, the clock starts ticking.

In retail the idea of premises could be very fuzzy. After all the mall may not be owned and in all likelihood not owned by Apple. In retail you are often asked to park at the back of the mall for good reasons, one of them being that customers park up front.

Secondly I can just imagine Tim Cook in a pair of running shoes parking his car and walking as fast as he can to the door, and he does it in 2 minutes so everyone else must as well. Damn those 6'1 people if you are only 5'6. If it is a 2 minute fast walk and you take 4 minutes casual, then you get docked.

I cannot claim I am working if I am have a 3 hour lunch break on company property.

But it is easier to consider that the commute to work is the employee's responsibility, it would be the most common and logical case. Work being where you actually do the work and not where you go to work.

If the contract specifies the place of the work as the Mall, Mall street 1, as soon as someone crosses that line, it is ON and ticks as long as they leave the premises. I see no ambiguity there. If the time spent walking to the door is so important hire the fastest people.

That's kind of an interesting question, but I'd lean towards that being part of commute and just tied into salary, unless you are required to drive. I used to get on my boss's nerves when I'd show up on time and be in the building, but not visibly at my desk. He was trying to apply more control than necessary, and my rationale was that there was no urgent matter requiring me to be at my desk in order for me to be capable of working (I had varies IT responsibilities). Being in proximity of someone requesting my presence was sufficient for fullfilling my duties, but I couldn't do that while in transit.

Time spent waiting for a mandatory search is time spent as part of your employment, just like the time you spend logging into your computer and any programs you need to do your work.

It sounds like it’s not mandatory if you don’t bring a bag or an iPhone into the store. I wonder whether they could keep a whitelist of Bluetooth IDs for employee-owned iPhones.

And as long as they use the company-provided NoPockets Jumpsuit, they get priority access to the Honesty Line. That could mean five more minutes with your family over dinner!

Not having worked at Apple, I have difficulty understanding whether the NoPocket Jumpsuit is a thing or not.

I worked in a call center where we were explicitly not paid to do those things. You were expected to have already done all of that by the time your shift started, otherwise you were considered late.

Apple isn't alone here, but they're obviously a fun big target for it.

>Apple isn't alone here, but they're obviously a fun big target for it.

They aren't. Too bad no one reported the situation at the call center. That's a textbook case of unpaid wages. I've worked at company before where this happened and the people who reported it were protected from retaliation, people above them lost their job over it, and back wages were paid out.

I get that people are afraid to report this kind of thing, but it's an effective way to stop companies from stealing wages.

There is a very clear line in that you chose that commute. You can find housing near your employer. You have a laundry list of personal reasons why that housing is not right for you but the fact remains you chose to have those things and commute instead of living nearby and sacrificing those things.

The employer requiring you to do something as a condition of continued employment is clearly, well obviously not, an act that should be compensated for. They could let you leave 15 minutes early to go through security check, they just don’t want to because, apparently, they don’t have to.

I have no doubt that you will find a group of people on the other side of the line there who think employers should have to pay for commuting time and obviously this case proves there are people on the other side of this line who think they shouldn’t have to compensate you for going through security time. However I would guess that the majority of people will agree that hardships you impose on yourself are your responsibility while hardships the employer imposes on you should be their responsibility.

> You can find housing near your employer. You have a laundry list of personal reasons why that housing is not right for you but the fact remains you chose to have those things and commute instead of living nearby and sacrificing those things.

I think this is only reasonable for jobs that 1) offer enough compensation that the worker has real choice about where they live and 2) both worker and employer expect the worker to live and work in the same place for a long time.

A lot of people are in situations where, rather than them choosing the housing, it's the landlord choosing the tenant, and the tenant has to take what they can get. At one and the same time, they may also be in a situation where, rather than them choosing the employer, it's the employer choosing the worker, and again, the worker takes what they can get. A long commute is not a self-imposed hardship when other people are the primary determiners of where you can live and work.

As much as I love them, there are not a lot of Apple Stores within walking distance of housing their least-paid employees can afford.

If that’s a clear line, how does zoning work? If there isn’t anything residential within ten minutes, your clear line flips: you cannot choose to live closer, so does everyone get paid an extra 20 minutes per day for the minimum commute? I don’t think it’s such a clear line.

It’s even fuzzier with the common situation of nothing remotely affordable within X minutes commute. You can’t choose a $3M home on minimum wage, so the delineation of what is and isn’t forced on you to do this job is very fuzzy.

I think a line can be pretty cleanly drawn at "employer explicitly makes you do it in order to receive your paycheck". Like I wouldn't expect to be paid for my walk from the parking lot any more than be paid for the rest of my commute as that's not actually related to the job site, it's just a consequence of my transport method - what if I was catching the bus, or walking, or I lived in an apartment building across the road?

Conversely - mandatory security screening is something that the company makes all employees go through every day as part of their job - it's no different from any other job task.

Although having a separate further away carpark for people that don't eat and presumably pay for the company dog food is shitty for other reasons. Similar to some clothing stores forcing their minimum wage workers to buy and wear on brand clothing (yes this is a thing).

I worked retail. That’s absurd — if I’m stuck in your building, pay me.

If the Apple store has serious pilferage issues, get serious about controls around product. I cannot imagine how much shrink they have —- you could heist $50k worth of stuff trivially with 3-4 people.

I get to choose where I live in relation to where I work. I also don't have to go home after work. That is my time to use as I wish.

Going through a pat down is not my time. I must wait on my employer.

It is also unilaterally redefinable. If $employer comes up with a new screen that saves them shrinkage, why should labor be expected to give up even more unpaid time for the privilege of submitting to it?

Anecdotally, it seems that most places in the world pay a fixed salary even to the lowest paid workers, instead of paying by the hour. Perhaps this could be a simpler solution to the problem instead of trying to reengineer cities.

Many decades ago something similar happened with Best Buy employees and waiting to leave the building. My memory is fuzzy but I recall it having to do with some ruling by a government authority. Basically at night shift we could clock out but had to wait for the manager to let us out of the building. Sometimes were were waiting for 15 + minutes. All employees got back pay.

The circumstances of this case seem similar to Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk, which involved workers at an Amazon warehouse in Nevada.

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

This is exactly what I thought about when I saw the headline. Amazon won that case and refused to pay for the security checks, does this ruling mean that they'll have to start paying too?

The fact that this awful nickle and diming of staff doesn't get vetoed by someone with a shred of awareness about PR, morale, good management and anything else beyond short-term balance sheet thinking speaks very ill of the company concerned.

They know that the bad PR won't affect their bottom line much, if at all, unless it turns into some kind of Draconian regulation/penalties, which it won't.

It seems there was a similar case in 2014 about Amazon workers not getting paid for screening time. The US Supreme Court decided unanimously that Amazon did not have to pay them.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/business/supreme-court-ru...

How is this case different from the precedent established by the Amazon case?

Edit:

In the 2014 case, it was the 9th Circuit that was being overruled. I wonder if this decision is destined for the same fate.

State requirement vs federal requirement. A better question I think is how did the US Supreme Court get the decision so spectacularly wrong?

> A better question I think is how did the US Supreme Court get the decision so spectacularly wrong?

I think when there is a unanimous decision, you can’t just jump to that premise. Remember, the job of the Supreme Court is to interpret the law. Laws can be bad or unjust (without being unconstitutional) and the Supreme Court will go with what the law says.

"The case that the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday turned on the meaning of a 1947 law, the Portal-to-Portal Act"

This is the problem. The Supreme Court has no choice but to follow the law. It's up to Congress to change the law. This appears to be an outdated, badly written law that doesn't account for present circumstances.

This is the biggest frustration that many people have with criticism of SCOTUS...they want them to rule one way or another when congress could simply write new laws to be more clear (ok, it's not simple but it is the correct way).

Right vs. Left...conservative vs. liberal...doesn't matter if the laws were written correctly to begin with.

I think partisanship is the main reason why Congress can't write laws to be more clear. Gridlock is easier than action, which leaves the courts to decide important issues.

Imagine the debate over rewriting the 2nd Amendment to be clearer. ;-)

I couldn't agree more. One of the few things I think Trump has done correctly is that he sunsetted DACA with a timeline that should have been adequate to pass a new law (that was his point actually since the presidential order was not the right way to do it).

Enough people were outraged that it should not have been hard to get something done...but still nothing. Better to place blame on Trump than to make sure a permanent law could be passed.

Oh...and we shouldn't be leaving it up to the courts...by the time its at SCOTUS the damage has been done and everyone's time is wasted.

From the New York Times article at the time:

The case that the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday turned on the meaning of a 1947 law, the Portal-to-Portal Act, which says that companies need not pay for “preliminary” or “postliminary” activities, meaning ones that take place before and after the workday proper. The Supreme Court interpreted the law in 1956 in Steiner v. Mitchell to require pay only for tasks that are an “integral and indispensable part of the principal activities for which covered workmen are employed.”

So, if someone disagrees, it seems as if their beef is with the 1947 law rather than the Supreme Court. While I'm sure there are grey areas, there isn't any real disagreement that, in general, workers aren't paid for getting dressed and commuting for example.

ADDED: From a lay perspective somewhat related would seem to be the question of whether workers are "on the clock" when changing into work clothes and protective gear. And the answer seems to be only to a limited degree. (Basically yes for special protective gear but not for work clothing in general.)

https://blogs.orrick.com/employment/2014/02/05/get-paid-for-...

I'm curious what additional context the SCOTUS applied when interpreting the phrase, “integral and indispensable part of the principal activities for which covered workmen are employed.”

My first thought when reading that phrasing is: if we assume that the security checks are NOT integral and indispensable, wouldn't that imply that the employees are free to skip those steps?

Or, from another angle, are there any limits on what activities are defined by employers as "integral and indispensable" or "principal"? E.g., could Amazon define the time spent walking from workspace-table to an equipment rack as outside the scope of paid work?

IANAL; I'm sure these questions have already been analyzed to death. If anyone knows where a layperson-accessible discussion is available I'd be grateful for a link.

[EDIT: reworded for clarity]

From a totally lay perspective, I don't disagree.

If I were in a hypothetical situation where I was an hourly worker and I had to spend 15 minutes at the beginning and end of the day setting up and tearing down my workspace, I would certainly expect that I would be paid for that time. But it's not clear that would be mandatory. (But maybe because I'd be on the premises?)

As you say, I'm sure these nuances have been analyzed to death and it does seem as if the courts have consistently taken a line that activities outside of the principal activities themselves (e.g. helping customers), even if required, mostly don't need to be compensated.

> "IANAL .... where a layperson-accessible ..."

as a side note, let's not separate ourselves from lawyers in our ability to reason about and determine what's fair, ethical, and just. it's well within our power to interpret and rationalize about human relations.

a little specialized training in argumentation doesn't give lawyers special powers in this regard. that is, let's not fall for either regulatory capture or an appeal to authority (that's not to say that lawyers don't often have relevant specialized experience to bring to bear in litigation and negotiation).

> as a side note, let's not separate ourselves from lawyers in our ability to reason about and determine what's fair, ethical, and just. it's well within our power to interpret and rationalize about human relations.

It should be noted, though, that appellate court opinions usually contain many citations to prior cases, quoting excepts from those cases and applying much subtle reasoning to try to justify saying the present case is like the prior cases whose ruling are similar to the present court's ruling, and much subtle reasoning to try to distinguish the present case from those prior cases that came to a difference conclusion.

It's real easy to go off track when trying to follow this. When reading cases in law school I had to resort to using something like 6 different colors of highlighter at once to mark up the cases in my book to help keep track of what was going on.

Yes, we indeed can (mostly) all reason about and determine what is fair, ethical, and just. But we usually don't have to provide extensive justification for how we reached our conclusions, and most situations where we have to make such determinations are fairly straightforward.

Courts are usually dealing with edge cases, where there are conflicting interests and it is not possible to come to a fair, ethical, or just outcome for everybody.

that's a good point, i took some (cross-discipline) law classes in college and did experience that intricate web of argument across time and jurisdiction a bit, which was not fun to say the least.

and certainly we can't be fair, ethical, and just for everyone all the time, but i don't think that means we should cede legal authority to only a special class because the arguments can get subtle and intricate. if anything, it seems to be good rationale to me for putting more effort into making the law simpler and less opaque (realizing that's harder than it sounds).

yes, that's actually what prompted me to submit the article, to stimulate discussion around that very question.

i haven't looked into each case in enough depth to have formulated an opinion yet, so i'm hoping we hn'ers come to some conclusions on that question together. =)

Amazon case was a matter of a federal law on pre and post shift activities.

This case is about a CA state law, so Amazon case would not apply.

So does this mean Amazon is going to start paying for their security screenings?

Sure.

They could easily charge thousands of their shady vendors peddling fakes to customers an extra fees to compensate for that.

The notion that an employer can mandate things to do but not pay for that time is completely ridiculous. This is a good decision.

Awesome that’s great. It’d be interesting if you could some how extend that to commuting, so hourly workers taking trains in for service work are compensated for their times in transit.

I (and probably many people here might) have thought about that in the past as well. It will surely be great from the employee's perspective, but thinking more about it, let's say a work day is 8 hours long. What if I stay 4 hours away from the office? I come and go everyday, and technically get paid for full day's work. There has to be some limit to it from the employer's perspective.

Please note that Europe had ruled a few years back that the time spent in commuting 'for work' must be counted as work hours (e.g. plumber travelling to client's location). But employees travelling to the same office everyday were excluded from that rule as far as I remember.

Wouldn't that incentivize people to live further, in less connected areas, increasing urban sprawl, environmental degradation, and segregation?

Does it strike anyone else as absurd that a $2 trillion company has spent 5 years and untold millions arguing over whether it must compensate employees for the 15 minutes it takes for a company-mandated frisk?

In fact, Apple lawyers argued before the California Supreme Court that the time was not mandated since employees could waltz just opt to ‘not bring things with them’. How insane is that - the search is not technically ‘required’ since people don’t technically ‘need’ to bring things with them when they come to work? Who doesn’t need to bring a purse/phone/backpack to work?

The whole thing feels straight out of some alternative (dystopian?) future America like Infinite Jest.

>Does it strike anyone else as absurd that a $2 trillion company has spent 5 years and untold millions arguing over whether it must compensate employees for the 15 minutes it takes for a company-mandated frisk?

As an Amazon employee, no, it does not.

It's almost like the big corps are in collusion to keep wages down, whether they employ tons of low-wager workers or only a few.

We all know it is about motivation, money and economies of scale.

Motivation - make money for rentiers, otherwise get sued.

Economies of scale - many low paid employees means differences in how you treat them can add up to millions.

Result - employ people to reduce those millions in costs.

Don't blame the man, blame the game.

When the referee blows their whistle, the individual player who transgressed against the rules or spirit of the game is individually punished, and collectively all players benefit from this, even the one penalized. That the one penalized may not agree with or comply with the referee is beyond the scope of accountability of one referee’s ability to enforce the rules of the game.

But Apple's economies of scale are in east Asian factories, no Apple stores.

Maybe they got to $2 trillion because of worker-unfriendly policies like this one.

It's not surprising once we realize that the $2T company is just a bunch of people with different priorities. A major shareholder of Apple can't be bothered to know about this minor issue, but for those lawyers it was a career making event.

You don’t get to 2T by paying more than you can.

Neither do you get there by being a bottom-feeding barrel scraper. (Well you might, but that's not how Apple did it.)

On the merits the retail employees seem obviously in the right: once you've clocked out you should be free to leave. If corporate wants to impose some extra hassle, they get to do that, but you get paid for your time.

But more importantly, the Apple retail stores are legitimately awesome. The checkout experience is amazing. The genius bars are the best tech support I've ever had. Something is working really well here! Why squeeze the golden goose?

Apple should take a cue from other beloved retailers (Costco and Trader Joe's come to mind) and make their stores coveted employers for those seeking retail work. Just fucking treat your employees well, they'll return the favor.

Perhaps you are underestimating the amount of theft by employees, and the fact that hiring more security or paying for 15 mins of waiting time to each employee would cost even more.

More than what? The cost of the court case? Because that would be a gamble at best, and one they lost. Now they're paying the time and the court costs.

This is really great. How did amazon’s case manage to get the opposite ruling, years ago?

Amazon was ruled using federal law as not everyone in the suit was based in California. In this case, it’s Californians suing under California law.

The ninth circuit is a federal court with no jurisdiction over state laws.

Either the Ninth Circuit overstepped their jurisdiction when they ruled[0] on whether Apple violated “California Industrial Welfare Commission Wage Order No. 7”,[1] or they actually do have jurisdiction.

My knowledge of the courts is that they are pretty strict about jurisdiction, so I’m led to believe that they actually do have it.

Also, they mention that they do:[2]

> We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

[0]: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/09/02/1...

[1]: [0;p.9 “III”]

[2]: [0;p.9 “I”]

Thanks.

Now onto Amazon, meat plants, and many other large-ish businesses that do this corrupt abuse of their workers time.

I don't understand- how were they not being paid? If I had to show up for a 9 to 5 and there was 15 minutes of security screening, I'm showing up at 9 and getting paid for it, not showing up early. Am I OOTL on something here? Were they threatened with termination?

This isn't screening to get in, it's screening to leave. So your shift ends at 5, and they make you wait in a line to get out the door--after you'd already clocked out. And yes, you would be threatened with termination if you didn't wait in the security line

Didn't this already get ruled the other way by scotus?

Federal law in the Amazon case, California law in this Apple case.

Ah! That makes sense. Thanks!

The idea that they wouldn’t is laughable/horrifying.

edit: wrong thread

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