In a decision that will certainly benefit employers facing claims of pre-shift and post-shift off-the-clock work, on December 9, 2014, the United States Supreme Court unanimously held that employees’ time spent waiting to undergo and undergoing antitheft security screenings before leaving their place of employment each day is not compensable hours worked under the Fair Labor Standards Act (the “FLSA”).
The employer, Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. (“Integrity Staffing”), provided warehouse staffing to Amazon.com. Integrity Staffing required its employees to undergo a security screening each day before leaving the warehouse. The employees alleged that they were entitled to compensation under the FLSA for the time spent waiting to undergo and actually undergoing the security screenings, which they claimed amounted to approximately 25 minutes each day.
The Court began its analysis by examining the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947, which excludes employers from FLSA liability for activities that are preliminary or postliminary to the principal activity or activities that their employees are employed to perform. 29 U.S.C. § 254(a)(2). The Court noted that it has interpreted the term “principal activity or activities” to embrace all activities that are an “integral and indispensable part” of the principal activities, and then further explained that an activity is “integral and indispensable” if it is “an intrinsic element of those activities and one with which the employee cannot dispense if he is to perform his principal activities.”
Applying this standard, the Court concluded that the security screenings at issue were not the principal activity or activities for which the employees were employed. Specifically, Integrity Staffing did not employ its workers to undergo security screenings, but rather to retrieve products from warehouse shelves and package the products for shipment. Additionally, the Court held that the security screenings were not “integral and indispensable” to the employees’ duties as warehouse workers because the screenings were not an intrinsic element of retrieving products from warehouse shelves or packaging them for shipment, and Integrity Staffing could have eliminated the screenings without impairing the employees’ ability to complete their work.
In so holding, the Court reversed a decision by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which had previously concluded that time spent in security screening counted as compensable “hours worked” because, if Integrity Staffing required the security screenings to prevent employee theft, the screenings were “necessary” to the employees’ primary work as warehouse employees and were performed for Integrity Staffing’s benefit. The Court held that the Ninth Circuit erred by focusing on whether an employer required a particular activity and clarified that the focus of the integral and indispensable test is tied to the work that an employee is employed to perform.
In light of this decision, employers should review job descriptions and other job-related materials to assure that they define the principal activities that an employee is expected to perform. Once these principal activities are established, employers should then carefully consider what activities at the start and end of these activities should be conducted on the clock as compensable hours worked.
The case is Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk et al., No. 13-433.
