In a unanimous 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court said employers can keep you on the job and not pay you for it.
The court decided by a 9-0 vote that employees of Integrity Staffing Solutions facilities in Nevada, where Amazon merchandise is processed and shipped, cannot claim compensation for time spent undergoing screening - up to half an hour a day, according to the workers - aimed at protecting against theft.
Let's discuss this after the fold.
It seems that employer "security screening" before and/or after your scheduled shifts is not "work", therefore they don't have to pay you for it.
Nice job.
Wait, I thought we were told that elections were all about the Supreme Court, yet somehow they all agreed that your employer can steal your time from you in their quest for "security".
Grrrr.....rrrrrrr!
The excuse used by Integrity Staffing Solutions, a contractor for Amazon, was that employee theft is rampant.
A business group called the Retail Litigation Center, in a brief supporting the warehousing company, said the industry in general loses $16 billion annually in thefts.
"Well, Mr. & Mrs. America, you will subsidize the security of this nation, especially the security of private for-profit corporations!"
This labor issue is one that I'm very familiar with. Through the years of my employment I've had various employers steal overtime from me and use the excuse that I was a salaried employee and thus they were exempt from paying it.
Amounts that seem small, such as not paying for time spent preparing a work station at the start of a shift, or for cleaning up and closing up at the end of a shift, can add up. When a worker earns only a minimum wage ($290 for a 40-hour week), shaving a mere half hour a day from the paycheck means a loss of more than $1,400 a year, including overtime premiums. That could be nearly 10 percent of a minimum-wage employee’s annual earnings—the difference between paying the rent and utilities or risking eviction and the loss of gas, water, or electric service.
The NYS Labor Department, bless them, saw it otherwise, every single time. Throughout those adventures I learned a very valuable lesson: An employer can steal from you and it's only a civil violation, like a parking ticket BUT if you steal from your employer, it's a criminal offense.
What our media rarely reports is that Employer theft from employees is estimated at $50 Billion a year. And the majority of those thefts are from low wage employees.
There’s another way to cut down on wage theft: ensure workers have leverage to find another job if the violations continue. Since the financial crisis, employers have had little to fear about stealing their workers’ wages. After all, it’s better to have 15 percent of your wages stolen then to not earn anything all.
That final bold quote says it all in the New America and it's clear the Supreme Court agrees, all of them.
When do I get to wake up?