Wage and Hour Update

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Author: By Lois M. Kosch
• Publication year: 2015
• Citation: Vol. 29 No. 2

Wage and Hour Update

By Lois M. Kosch

Lois M. Kosch is a partner at Wilson Turner Kosmo. She specializes in counseling and representing employers in all aspects of employment law and litigation. Ms. Kosch is a former member of the Labor and Employment Law Section's Executive Committee.

United States Supreme Court Rules Time Spent in Security Screening Is Not Compensable Under Federal Law

Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk, 135 S. Ct. 513, 190 L. Ed. 2d 410 (2014)

Hourly employees working on assignment in Amazon.com warehouses in Nevada sued their employer, alleging they were not compensated for all hours worked under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The employees' duties included locating and packing inventory for delivery to customers. Before leaving the warehouse each day, employees went through a security screening designed to prevent theft. The employees estimated that this screening took approximately 25 minutes each workday. Citing the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947, the United States Supreme Court determined that the employees were not entitled to compensation for time spent during the security screening.

The Court held that employees need only be compensated for activities before and after work that are an "integral and indispensable part of the [employees'] principal activities," meaning "an intrinsic element of those activities and one with which the employee cannot dispense if he is to perform his principal activities." Since the employer did not employ its workers to undergo security screenings, but to retrieve products from warehouse shelves and package those products, and since the employer could have "eliminated the screenings altogether," the screenings were not "an intrinsic element" of the employees' work. Therefore, under the FLSA, security screening time was not compensable.

California...