Supreme Court To Hear An After-Shift Pay Case

In a class action, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas are claiming they need to hang around for almost a half hour, off the clock, in order to go through a security check to make sure they haven’t taken anything, and they want to get paid for their time. The defendant – a temp agency, not Amazon – argues that the scenario is governed by a decades-old precedent that addressed “doffing and donning” – suiting up and returning to street clothes before and after work – and that security checks are non-compensable because they are “postliminary to employees’ principal job activities.” Plaintiff attorneys argue that what’s relevant is that the company says you have to do it, and that makes it intrinsic to the job. A retailers group, in an amicus filing, said that post-shift security checks are a common practice and paying for the time would be costly, and in what some labor groups found puzzling, the Obama administration, Labor and Justice departments, has filed a brief backing the defendant. Oral arguments are scheduled for Wednesday.