You’re not my lawyer, I’m not your client, you’re not offering legal advice, I’ll rely on what you say to my own detriment, etc.
Not that I’m planning on doing anything about this, except perhaps seethe with bitterness and resentment, but a situation at a brand new job, which mirrors a situation at several previous jobs, has arisen. I just started working at a new call center and got the standard “be logged in and ready to take calls at the start of your scheduled shift.” Which means that if my shift starts at 9 I have to arrive between 8:50 and 8:55 to launch all the necessary programs. On the other end of the day, the standard “no logging off until the end of your scheduled shift.” Which means that if my shift ends at 5 I will be there until at least 5:05 shutting everything down. I asked (as I always do) if this is paid time and was told (as I always am) that it is not. The one time a management weasel attempted to explain why this isn’t paid, she said “it’s not working, it’s getting ready to work” and compared it unfavorably to the notion of being paid for the time it takes to drive to the office from home. So this amounts to approximately an hour per week that I’m expected to be at work for which they will not pay me. Not a great deal of money in any given week but over the course of a year it adds up.
The question is, may employers legally refuse to pay employees for time the employee is expected to be at work, under the “preparing for work” argument? I have this vague memory from my employment law class lo these many years ago of a case that was sort of on point, involving a company refusing to pay employees for the time it took them to don protective gear to deal with chemicals, but I can’t find anything in my notes or textbook so I’m sort of lost in trying to nail it down.
In this particular call center I was hired to work specifically on a federal government contract, so if there’s a different answer based on federal labor rules I’d like to know.
The only call center where I ever worked that didn’t dick people over the extra time was, coincidentally or not, the only union shop I ever worked. There, the employer tacked an extra 5 minutes on to the legally required lunch period to compensate. Which would satisfy my as a solution in this instance as well, but I’m not exactly holding my breath.
I quit a call center that did this (not for this reason, however). You can only have 5 min to get all of your systems up and be ready to take calls, but they take at least 10 min to get them all launched and logged in. One of my trainers actually told me to be there early and start logging in before I signed into the phone. :rolleyes:
Ok. Actually the answer to your general question is yes. Under the Portal-to-Portal Act, employers need not compensate employees for:
So, yes, an employer can refuse to compensate employees for prelimary and postliminary activities. But the law gets a little murky when one considers what exactly constitutes preliminary and postliminary activity.
You can’t really do your work until your computer is on and your applications are running. So that probably qualifies as integral and indispensable. Similarly, you are probably required by your employer to shut down your computer at the end of the day. So those activities are probably not preliminary or postliminary.
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Compare* http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=10th&navby=case&no=961544 (time spent preparing for work and cleaning up after work were compensable time despite employer’s argument that employee’s workday started when they clocked in and out).
Courts evaluate three factors in addition to the amount of time to determine whether otherwise compensable time is de minimis: “(1) the practical administrative difficulty of recording the additional time; (2) the size of the claim in the aggregate; and (3) whether `the claimants performed the work on a regular basis.’”
In this case, it would be easy for the employer to record the additional time. Supervisors could record it, or they could have empoyees submit time sheets or punch a clock.
Similarly, the claim in aggregate looks pretty large. Twelve minutes a day is an hour a week, fifty two hours a year. *Id. * (aggregating time over up to two years).
The work will occur every day. It is a regular activity. *Id. * (ten minutes of regular activity weighed in favor of employees).
If you want to complain contact the department of labor here.
Your state might have additional laws that apply, so you could also call the wage and hour division of your state department of labor.
Best I could do online for Wisconsin law was a case holding that state patrol officers are entitled to compensation for time they spend on lunch breaks.
You could contact these folks for more information.
For what it’s worth, the Supreme Court is currently considering a case on walking/waiting time associated with the donning/doffing of safety equipment. You might get more clarification in that opinion, although the issue is not exactly the same.
This sounds exactly like the case I was thinking about in my OP. I had thought it was a settled case from my employment law class from five years ago. Huh.
It is important to note that the decision was unanimous. I always like unanimous rulings from the Supreme Court. It’s a very public slap when you can’t get one of them to agree with your position. :wally
Of course the case isn’t on all fours with the OP. And the Court didn’t find all of the time claimed in the case to be compensable. They found time spent
So some ambiguity still remains with respect to **Otto’**s original question.
In what inconceivable way is it improper to use the Wally smiley to describe the losing side of a Supreme Court case that gets dimissed with a unanimous opinion?? I’m not referring to anyone here in this forum; I’m referring to generic people with whom we don’t even have contact!!
Consider me truly confused. I’d have thought that a forum like this wouldn’t regress to blanket application of a “rule.”
