Supreme court decision strikes another blow against workplace fairness
In Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk, a unanimous Supreme Court recently ruled that companies do not have to pay employees for the time employees must spend being subjected to daily anti-theft screening procedures imposed by employers. Notably, the screening process at issue in Busk lasts up to approximately half an hour every day. In that case, the employees working at Amazon warehouses objected to being required to remain on at the job site daily without being paid so that the company can conduct a lengthy procedure imposed to guard against potential theft of Amazon property.
To be clear, the company’s time-consuming screening procedure benefits Amazon rather than the employees. The employees cannot leave the job site and are clearly under the command and control of the employer throughout the lengthy screening process imposed every day. In short, Busk stretches the bounds of what employers can require of employees without paying those employees anything. Given all Justices of the Supreme Court signed off on the decision, further erosion of workplace fairness can be expected going forward.
That employees face additional challenges in prosecuting wage claims should not be surprising. The Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals have issued opinions in the last year that have similarly undermined employee rights in wage cases. In Adair v. ConAgra Foods, Inc., 728 F.3d 849 (8th Cir. 2013), for example, employees at a frozen-food production facility sought unpaid overtime for time spent traveling between the employer time clock and the employer changing stations where employees change into employer-mandated uniforms. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the employer did not have to pay the employees for that travel time. The Court justified its decision by concluding that the “donning and doffing” or changing into employer-required uniforms was not a “primary activity” for purpose of the job, so the travel time was not compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 201, et seq. This opinion, along with a more recent and highly analogous decision by the Supreme Court in Sandifer v. U.S. Steel Corp., 134 S.Ct. 870 (2014), has evidently prompted increasingly creative arguments by employers that an array of work-related conduct is somehow not primary work activity and, therefore, should not be compensated. Indeed, Busk provides a case in point. Such court rulings exemplify the ongoing skepticism shown toward public-interest oriented cases, including those involving claims under employment law, civil rights statutes, and consumer protection provisions.
