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9th Circuit Rules Apple Owes Retail Workers for Time Spent Security Screening

219 points by clairity 6y ago

mikece 6y ago
Not only are Apple's products made in a country with suspect labor conditions, they have questionable labor practices here as well? And this from a company whose CEO is so smugly self-righteous on stage and in the media. I would like to say I am shocked but, sadly, I am not.
- viro 6y ago
  You clearly have never worked retail if you think Apple treats their retail workers bad.
  - mikece 6y ago
    Treating a worker badly and having questionable labor practices, such as not letting someone leave the premises while not paying them, don't necessarily go together. I'm sure Apple treats their retail workers excellently and probably even pays them well. But to say "Okay, your shift is over and we're not paying you anymore -- but you cannot leave the site until we check your bag" could be construed as unlawful detainment in the eyes of an overly aggressive DA looking to make noise during an election year. Until an employee is free to go then they need to be paid for their time.
    - viro 6y ago
      > such as not letting someone leave the premises while not paying them Honestly I suspect this is mostly a logistics problem. The clock is in the break room the security check is at the door. A security check in the break room feels a little pointless. But in all fairness my store was rather small and we didn't really do security checks.
      - emidln 6y ago
        It seems pretty easy to fix this for Apple by relying on video to prove whether employees are in store/breakroom by default and allowing overrides for special circumstances. This might result in Apple paying a few minutes more here and there, but the burden should be on the more powerful party (the company in labor situations). This doesn't even have to be automated, it could trivially be the manager's job to account for their crew's start/stop by spending max 5 minutes a day with cameras. I believe commercial systems can already automate this if you didn't want to burden your managers with this.
        elliekelly 6y ago
        I can walk into an apple store, grab something moderately expensive off the shelf, scan the barcode on my phone, pay for it, then stick it in my bag and leave. Presumably Apple has some method for making sure that people who grab items off of the shelf and put it in their bag aren't stealing. I've never once been stopped by an Apple employee when I've paid via the app. I don't understand how it can be that Apple can accept that level of shop-lifting risk but can't use the same method to reach an acceptable level of risk with respect to employees. Especially since I would expect Apple to trust employees more than random customers, not less.
        bigwavedave 6y ago
        I can't speak for Apple, but something I was told at GNC that shocked me about the way companies might view their workers is that I, as a white male employee that enjoyed exercise, was always under more suspicion of theft than any customer would be. My manager straight up told me this, there wasn't any inference on my part nor was this some subtle implication. I understand they're different companies and different markets, but now I typically assume that most companies are more suspicious of their employees (the people who spend so much time in the store, who have a better knowledge of security than the average customer, who know what products usually go missing organically, what times someone is likely to be looking at them, etc) than the average random stranger who walks in.
    - dkonofalski 6y ago
      Sure, but you're assuming that this was a mandated practice by the "evil corporation" when the reality is just that individual managers didn't think this through in their stores. In the store that I worked out of, you had your bag checked, you clocked out, and they walked you out the door (for us it was the back door). There was always someone whose job it was to do this bag checks and they never lasted more than a minute. This sounds to me like it was more "Manager gets caught up with a customer. Manager tells employee to clock out and then they'll check their bag. Employee goes to the floor to find manager for bag check and has to wait for manager to finish their interaction. Interaction takes longer than 5 minutes so employee is waiting off the clock to have their bag checked." Somehow, that became the norm when the reality should have been "Manager gets caught up with a customer. Manager tells employee they'll check their back and then can clock out. Employee has to wait for manager but gets paid while waiting. Manager checks bag. Employee clocks out and leaves." I also suspect that part of the reason this became the norm in some stores was that individual managers were risk-averse and wanted employees to clock out first because, otherwise, they get to return to the back room with their bag post-check. If they clock out first, they can leave right after their bag is checked.
      - pseudalopex 6y ago
        It became Apple's problem when some of the workers complained to Tim Cook 8 years ago.[1] [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2015/06/11/apple-bag-check-lawsuit/ https://www.macrumors.com/2015/06/11/apple-bag-check-lawsuit...
        dkonofalski 6y ago
        This is the exact lawsuit in question. Was this link supposed to show something?
        pseudalopex 6y ago
        Apple knew what the managers were doing and could have stopped it.
  - soperj 6y ago
    It's sad how many passes people on this site give Apple because they like their design.
    - viro 6y ago
      I worked in retail for 12 years 4 of those at Apple retail. The treatment at Apple was light years ahead of the other companies. Hell its hard to even find a company that will give part time workers health insurance.
      - soperj 6y ago
        whataboutism doesn't excuse apple from paying people for hours they're required to be at work.
        viro 6y ago
        You understand that statement was nowhere near whataboutism, right? All of the examples were about how Apple on avg. treats their employees very well. Whataboutism would be me bringing up the amazon story as a way to counter the criticism.
    - dkonofalski 6y ago
      Or maybe the reality and truth of the situation is a little less sensational so it doesn't get as many clicks yet people can see through that...
      - soperj 6y ago
        It's not though. They literally were requiring unpaid time at work.
        dkonofalski 6y ago
        No they weren't. They were requiring bag checks and some managers were making employees clock out first.
falcolas 6y ago
Good. It’s not a part of their commute, and it’s required to start/end working. So, just fricking pay them.
- refurb 6y ago
  Yeah, the Amazon ruling never made sense to me. If your employer is restricting what you can do with your time (I.e. wait for a security screen before leaving work) then they need to pay you for that time.
  - ghshephard 6y ago
    It's not so much what makes sense - I think the vast majority, if not everyone, on HN would agree that it makes sense to pay an employee if they are required to perform a particular time-consuming security screening while on the work site as part of their job. The question is, what does the law say - and, rather than have judges go against the law, and do what they think makes sense, the proper approach is to change the law.
    - refurb 6y ago
      Entirely fair. The court needs to rule based on what's in the law, not what's fair (unless it's clearly unconstitutional). Fair is the responsibility of legislators.
      - anigbrowl 6y ago
        Article II, section 2: The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; Now, this particular suit was presumably brought to court on a legal rather than equitable basis, but courts are in fact empowered to consider cases on the latter basis.
    - spaetzleesser 6y ago
      “The question is, what does the law say“ Correct. In the end the US needs better laws to protect workers. It’s not good that basic things like this need to be decided by the court. Seems that’s in line with the general trend that congress leaves more and more decisions up to the courts instead of clarifying the laws.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
It seems there was a similar case in 2014 about Amazon workers not getting paid for screening time. The US Supreme Court decided unanimously that Amazon did not have to pay them. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/business/supreme-court-rules-against-worker-pay-for-security-screenings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/business/supreme-court-ru... How is this case different from the precedent established by the Amazon case? Edit: In the 2014 case, it was the 9th Circuit that was being overruled. I wonder if this decision is destined for the same fate.
- ebg13 6y ago
  State requirement vs federal requirement. A better question I think is how did the US Supreme Court get the decision so spectacularly wrong?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
    > A better question I think is how did the US Supreme Court get the decision so spectacularly wrong? I think when there is a unanimous decision, you can’t just jump to that premise. Remember, the job of the Supreme Court is to interpret the law. Laws can be bad or unjust (without being unconstitutional) and the Supreme Court will go with what the law says.
    - _qulr 6y ago
      "The case that the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday turned on the meaning of a 1947 law, the Portal-to-Portal Act" This is the problem. The Supreme Court has no choice but to follow the law. It's up to Congress to change the law. This appears to be an outdated, badly written law that doesn't account for present circumstances.
      - j_walter 6y ago
        This is the biggest frustration that many people have with criticism of SCOTUS...they want them to rule one way or another when congress could simply write new laws to be more clear (ok, it's not simple but it is the correct way). Right vs. Left...conservative vs. liberal...doesn't matter if the laws were written correctly to begin with.
skunkworker 6y ago
Will this also apply to the California Supreme Court ruling that Amazon won back in 2013? https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/business/supreme-court-rules-against-worker-pay-for-security-screenings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/business/supreme-court-ru...
- granzymes 6y ago
  Judging by this quote, there’s a good chance SCOTUS overturns a ruling on this topic by the 9th circuit a second time. > Justice Thomas disagreed, saying the appeals court had “erred by focusing on whether an employer required a particular activity.” The right test, he said, was whether the activity “is tied to the productive work that the employee is employed to perform.” Maybe the 9th will overturn en blanc before it reaches SCOTUS.
  - azinman2 6y ago
    That’s a very silly viewpoint. If I have to travel to the North Pole to change a lightbulb, should I only get paid for changing the lightbulb? If the security screening takes 9h, would we really expect employees not to be paid? If so, these would be pretty terrible job arrangements.
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      Furthermore, this would open the door to Apple making any time consuming and unreasonable demands. This ia rife for abuse.
    - NationalPark 6y ago
      It's based on the wording of a 1947 law, maybe it's time to change that law. I can see the need for clarity here though. Should employers pay their workers for time spent commuting to a job site/office? Can I live three hours away and make a cool 6 hours of extra wages listening to audio books on my way to/from work?
      - Frondo 6y ago
red_hare 6y ago
As a teenager, I worked running boardwalk games for a very well known theme park. I don't want to say the name, but let's just say it was one with many flags. Every day the workflow was as follows: 1. Sign-in in the employee entrance office. 2. Get your cash bag from costumes. 3. Pick up $200 worth of singles from the cash office for making change which both you and the teller would count out. 4. Go through a security check. 5. Walkthrough the park from the employee entrance to where your game was (often the other side of the park). The whole thing took 20 minutes and we would signed-in to start being paid at the next 15 minute interval from when we arrived at our game. When we checked out, we did the whole process in reverse but would be signed-out for the previous 15 minute interval when we left our game area. All in all, we were losing 40-68 minutes of wages per day. Worse if there were long lines in the office or costumes or the cash office. Of course, we were also only paid $6.15 an hour and had to pay union dues out of that, so in total, it didn't add up to much...
- spaced-out 6y ago
  >Of course, we were also only paid $6.15 an hour and had to pay union dues out of that, so in total, it didn't add up to much... Not to you, but it definitely added up to a noticeable amount for your employer.
- rgbrenner 6y ago
  That's a lot.. an hour a day is 1/8th of your pay. If this was year around, that would be (260 work days) $1600.. out of $12800/year total gross pay for full time. You say it's not a lot, but that's only because the job doesn't pay a lot and (I assume) it was short term.
- OldHand2018 6y ago
  As a teenager, I worked at a Kmart. It didn't take too long to be "promoted" to cashier. They never let anyone near the money room without already being on the clock. You got your till loaded with cash, counted it out, and walked to your register. All on the clock. When done, you took your till back, counted it out, and handed it back in. All on the clock. I'm only writing this as a counter example - not every place was awful about it.
- 6y ago
bigtex 6y ago
Many decades ago something similar happened with Best Buy employees and waiting to leave the building. My memory is fuzzy but I recall it having to do with some ruling by a government authority. Basically at night shift we could clock out but had to wait for the manager to let us out of the building. Sometimes were were waiting for 15 + minutes. All employees got back pay.
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
This should have been an open-and-shut case, its unbelievable that it took years to re-affirm established norm that employees must be paid for their time, no matter what the firm decides to waste it on. So don't waste it.
ponker 6y ago
The idea that they wouldn’t is laughable/horrifying.
gumby 6y ago
This is really great. How did amazon’s case manage to get the opposite ruling, years ago?
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Amazon was ruled using federal law as not everyone in the suit was based in California. In this case, it’s Californians suing under California law.
  - gumby 6y ago
    The ninth circuit is a federal court with no jurisdiction over state laws.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      Either the Ninth Circuit overstepped their jurisdiction when they ruled[0] on whether Apple violated “California Industrial Welfare Commission Wage Order No. 7”,[1] or they actually do have jurisdiction. My knowledge of the courts is that they are pretty strict about jurisdiction, so I’m led to believe that they actually do have it. Also, they mention that they do:[2] > We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291. [0]: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/09/02/15-17382.pdf https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/09/02/1... [1]: [0;p.9 “III”] [2]: [0;p.9 “I”]
      - gumby 6y ago
        Thanks.
LatteLazy 6y ago
Didn't this already get ruled the other way by scotus?
- ensignavenger 6y ago
  Federal law in the Amazon case, California law in this Apple case.
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    Ah! That makes sense. Thanks!
quesera 6y ago
The fact that Apple let this go to court is disappointing. Apple should do the right thing here, even if they are not legally obligated. Pay retail employees for all work which is required of them. Do not dither over trivialities.
- andybak 6y ago
  I posted a similar sentiment but you've highlighted the key point. It's (slightly) understandable that this was company policy as it was probably decided somewhere down the food chain. But at the point it became a court case, red lights should have been flashing at the highest levels that this was the kind of thing that paints the company in a terrible light. This is proper "don't be evil" territory. Don't be the bad guys, the cardboard cutout evil capitalists. Nobody on the board thought this was a bad look?
  - GeekyBear 6y ago
    >This is proper "don't be evil" territory. It's a bad look, for sure, but common in high end retail. Proper evil territory featuring cardboard cutout evil capitalists looks more like this: >Google, facing an advertising slump caused by the pandemic, has rescinded offers to several thousand people who had agreed to work at the company as temporary and contract workers. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/technology/google-rescinds-job-offers-to-contract-workers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/technology/google-rescind...
    - Loughla 6y ago
      Maybe I'm really way more removed from tech than I thought, but isn't there a difference? Apple: Not paying you for mandated time spent at work for the employers benefit. Google: Cuts temporary and contract workers because of budget problems. What makes the first regular retail action, and the second evil? Because I would argue that both, while garbage, are, in-fact, pretty standard things that bad people do. Contract and temp employees are the first to go when times get bad. That's true across industry, correct? What am I missing?
andybak 6y ago
The fact that this awful nickle and diming of staff doesn't get vetoed by someone with a shred of awareness about PR, morale, good management and anything else beyond short-term balance sheet thinking speaks very ill of the company concerned.
- nerdponx 6y ago
  They know that the bad PR won't affect their bottom line much, if at all, unless it turns into some kind of Draconian regulation/penalties, which it won't.
spaetzleesser 6y ago
The notion that an employer can mandate things to do but not pay for that time is completely ridiculous. This is a good decision.
ehnto 6y ago
edit: wrong thread
ldoughty 6y ago
Like many people, I worked retail. I never got angry at the security guy trying to let me out the door, but it was frustrating to wait 5 minutes here and there unpaid. I agree that people should be paid for that time.. but I'm also curious where the line is drawn? I left the city to work on a small town because my commute 5 miles/day was 15-20 hours/week. I suppose you can argue many jobs pay well enough to cover that... But people also work retail in those areas. An ideal solution would be to spread out the cities -- encourage more remote working (though not like we currently see)... But in lieu of that, where is the limit? Is employee parking, which is a 5 minute walk to the back of the lot, covered? I had a friend that works at a car factory... If you don't drive that manufacturers car, you park in lot B, an extra minute or three away. Is that any different then being forced to stand at the for to leave a few minutes now and then? (It's not always 5-15 minutes, where this example is a constant). Please accept this as a thought experiment... Not a criticism against better pay for retail. Everyone deserves the pursuit of happiness.
- hkai 6y ago
  Anecdotally, it seems that most places in the world pay a fixed salary even to the lowest paid workers, instead of paying by the hour. Perhaps this could be a simpler solution to the problem instead of trying to reengineer cities.
- thinkingkong 6y ago
  In your example you keep saying 5m as though thats the industry standard sla for security. Thats probably fine. The problem is that if the time is unpaid, theres no balancing force to get people through the queue. If you have to spend more on security guards to get the median time to check someone down to 5m, why would you do it if you dont have to?
  - ldoughty 6y ago
    My average wait time was less than a minute.. though on a few years days i'd wait 5 minutes or more. I don't disagree with you... Just curious where people think the line is drawn. I personally look at this from the other side -- if we were more accepting of remote work, would cities be so large? Traffic so bad? But obviously, that's not today... So should the Starbucks employee be paid for their commute time? Is it their choice to drive 45 minutes to work? Or is that a mandated job function by applying? What if they were transferred? It's no longer the employee choice, but a business requirement to work there. Like I said, thought experiment. I agree, paying for the time created incentive, probably a good thing.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jws 6y ago
Always amazing to see how things are decided by tiny reading of the English language. The law states… Hours worked’ means the time during which an employee is subject to the control of an employer, and includes all the time the employee is suffered or permitted to work, whether or not required to do so The lower court read that as "hours worked is the time under employer control where the employee can work whether they do it or not". The supremes cut that into two statements at the ", and" and made "subject to the control of the employer" stand alone in addition to when they could be made to work. By definition the supremes are correct, but the judges that ruled the other way are also very experienced judges. Also important… Apple (probably accidentally) forfeited the "de minimis" argument which says employees don't have to be paid for small, incidental periods of time off the clock. I was expecting this case to be a declaration on reasonable "de minimis" requirements. Instead we got a sentence diagramming exercise.
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  > The lower court read that as "hours worked is the time under employee control where the employee can work whether they do it or not". The supremes cut that into two statements at the ", and" and made "subject to the control of the employer" stand alone in addition to when they could be made to work. (1) I think you meant "time under employer control"? (2) Are you suggesting the lower court just ignored the "is suffered" part?
  - jws 6y ago
    1 - thanks, fixed. 2 - the lower court appears to have used the back half of the sentence as describing the components of the first half. Given the supremes’ reading, the back half doesn’t need to even be there, though I guess if you can conceive of someone working for a company but not subject to the control of the company it would cover some ground. Heaven knows I’ve had employees like that.
    - mehrdadn 6y ago
      2 - But if the circuit court used the back of the sentence to read the first half, time going through security screening would've seemed like a pretty obvious example of time that the employee "is suffered", right? My understanding was that's not what happened though. See page 7 for the summary of the district court's reasoning.
blintz 6y ago
Does it strike anyone else as absurd that a $2 trillion company has spent 5 years and untold millions arguing over whether it must compensate employees for the 15 minutes it takes for a company-mandated frisk? In fact, Apple lawyers argued before the California Supreme Court that the time was not mandated since employees could waltz just opt to ‘not bring things with them’. How insane is that - the search is not technically ‘required’ since people don’t technically ‘need’ to bring things with them when they come to work? Who doesn’t need to bring a purse/phone/backpack to work? The whole thing feels straight out of some alternative (dystopian?) future America like Infinite Jest.
- krapp 6y ago
  >Does it strike anyone else as absurd that a $2 trillion company has spent 5 years and untold millions arguing over whether it must compensate employees for the 15 minutes it takes for a company-mandated frisk? As an Amazon employee, no, it does not.
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    It's almost like the big corps are in collusion to keep wages down, whether they employ tons of low-wager workers or only a few.
    - CarbyAu 6y ago
      We all know it is about motivation, money and economies of scale. Motivation - make money for rentiers, otherwise get sued. Economies of scale - many low paid employees means differences in how you treat them can add up to millions. Result - employ people to reduce those millions in costs. Don't blame the man, blame the game.
      - aspenmayer 6y ago
        When the referee blows their whistle, the individual player who transgressed against the rules or spirit of the game is individually punished, and collectively all players benefit from this, even the one penalized. That the one penalized may not agree with or comply with the referee is beyond the scope of accountability of one referee’s ability to enforce the rules of the game.
one2know 6y ago
So does this mean Amazon is going to start paying for their security screenings?
- Trias11 6y ago
  Sure. They could easily charge thousands of their shady vendors peddling fakes to customers an extra fees to compensate for that.
learc83 6y ago
I worked at Best Buy during college, and if you closed you'd have to wait for a manager to unlock the door for you and check your stuff. If I had to wait more than a minute or so, I'd fill out a time correction for the time I was spent locked in the building. Anytime someone said anything about it, I said if I'm stuck in the building I'm under the company's control, so I should be paid. Eventually managers just started getting there faster when I paged them. A while later Best Buy was sued for this and lost.
- Keverw 6y ago
  Reminds me of reading an article talking about how Walmart used to lock people in who worked the night shift like stocking shelfs. Seems like Walmart was doing this in the early 2000s, there's an article from 2004 in the New York Times. Didn't know that there was a similar thing at Best Buy, wonder what year that was.
- dliff 6y ago
  I worked for Best Buy (Geek Squad) as well, about 12 years ago. I had the same experience. Even if they were going to pay me for the time, it felt wrong that they told me I was not able to leave. At times you could be waiting for 15 minutes. It was my first job at 16 years of age, and I didn't have the care or confidence to correct the time punch. At my store they would have to approve time punch modifications, so it would have been obvious if you did that every night. The one person who did get fired for stealing was simply grabbing laptops, removing them from their box, and casually walking out with them.
deviation 6y ago
I don't understand- how were they not being paid? If I had to show up for a 9 to 5 and there was 15 minutes of security screening, I'm showing up at 9 and getting paid for it, not showing up early. Am I OOTL on something here? Were they threatened with termination?
- learc83 6y ago
  This isn't screening to get in, it's screening to leave. So your shift ends at 5, and they make you wait in a line to get out the door--after you'd already clocked out. And yes, you would be threatened with termination if you didn't wait in the security line
wtn 6y ago
The circumstances of this case seem similar to Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk, which involved workers at an Amazon warehouse in Nevada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_Staffing_Solutions,_Inc._v._Busk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_Staffing_Solutions,_...
- d3nj4l 6y ago
  This is exactly what I thought about when I saw the headline. Amazon won that case and refused to pay for the security checks, does this ruling mean that they'll have to start paying too?
codyb 6y ago
Awesome that’s great. It’d be interesting if you could some how extend that to commuting, so hourly workers taking trains in for service work are compensated for their times in transit.
- piyush_soni 6y ago
  I (and probably many people here might) have thought about that in the past as well. It will surely be great from the employee's perspective, but thinking more about it, let's say a work day is 8 hours long. What if I stay 4 hours away from the office? I come and go everyday, and technically get paid for full day's work. There has to be some limit to it from the employer's perspective. Please note that Europe had ruled a few years back that the time spent in commuting 'for work' must be counted as work hours (e.g. plumber travelling to client's location). But employees travelling to the same office everyday were excluded from that rule as far as I remember.
- asciident 6y ago
  Wouldn't that incentivize people to live further, in less connected areas, increasing urban sprawl, environmental degradation, and segregation?
heimatau 6y ago
Now onto Amazon, meat plants, and many other large-ish businesses that do this corrupt abuse of their workers time.

219 points by clairity 6y ago

Not only are Apple's products made in a country with suspect labor conditions, they have questionable labor practices here as well? And this from a company whose CEO is so smugly self-righteous on stage and in the media. I would like to say I am shocked but, sadly, I am not.

viro 6y ago
You clearly have never worked retail if you think Apple treats their retail workers bad.
- mikece 6y ago
  Treating a worker badly and having questionable labor practices, such as not letting someone leave the premises while not paying them, don't necessarily go together. I'm sure Apple treats their retail workers excellently and probably even pays them well. But to say "Okay, your shift is over and we're not paying you anymore -- but you cannot leave the site until we check your bag" could be construed as unlawful detainment in the eyes of an overly aggressive DA looking to make noise during an election year. Until an employee is free to go then they need to be paid for their time.
  - viro 6y ago
    > such as not letting someone leave the premises while not paying them Honestly I suspect this is mostly a logistics problem. The clock is in the break room the security check is at the door. A security check in the break room feels a little pointless. But in all fairness my store was rather small and we didn't really do security checks.
    - emidln 6y ago
      It seems pretty easy to fix this for Apple by relying on video to prove whether employees are in store/breakroom by default and allowing overrides for special circumstances. This might result in Apple paying a few minutes more here and there, but the burden should be on the more powerful party (the company in labor situations). This doesn't even have to be automated, it could trivially be the manager's job to account for their crew's start/stop by spending max 5 minutes a day with cameras. I believe commercial systems can already automate this if you didn't want to burden your managers with this.
      - elliekelly 6y ago
        I can walk into an apple store, grab something moderately expensive off the shelf, scan the barcode on my phone, pay for it, then stick it in my bag and leave. Presumably Apple has some method for making sure that people who grab items off of the shelf and put it in their bag aren't stealing. I've never once been stopped by an Apple employee when I've paid via the app. I don't understand how it can be that Apple can accept that level of shop-lifting risk but can't use the same method to reach an acceptable level of risk with respect to employees. Especially since I would expect Apple to trust employees more than random customers, not less.
        bigwavedave 6y ago
        I can't speak for Apple, but something I was told at GNC that shocked me about the way companies might view their workers is that I, as a white male employee that enjoyed exercise, was always under more suspicion of theft than any customer would be. My manager straight up told me this, there wasn't any inference on my part nor was this some subtle implication. I understand they're different companies and different markets, but now I typically assume that most companies are more suspicious of their employees (the people who spend so much time in the store, who have a better knowledge of security than the average customer, who know what products usually go missing organically, what times someone is likely to be looking at them, etc) than the average random stranger who walks in.
  - dkonofalski 6y ago
    Sure, but you're assuming that this was a mandated practice by the "evil corporation" when the reality is just that individual managers didn't think this through in their stores. In the store that I worked out of, you had your bag checked, you clocked out, and they walked you out the door (for us it was the back door). There was always someone whose job it was to do this bag checks and they never lasted more than a minute. This sounds to me like it was more "Manager gets caught up with a customer. Manager tells employee to clock out and then they'll check their bag. Employee goes to the floor to find manager for bag check and has to wait for manager to finish their interaction. Interaction takes longer than 5 minutes so employee is waiting off the clock to have their bag checked." Somehow, that became the norm when the reality should have been "Manager gets caught up with a customer. Manager tells employee they'll check their back and then can clock out. Employee has to wait for manager but gets paid while waiting. Manager checks bag. Employee clocks out and leaves." I also suspect that part of the reason this became the norm in some stores was that individual managers were risk-averse and wanted employees to clock out first because, otherwise, they get to return to the back room with their bag post-check. If they clock out first, they can leave right after their bag is checked.
    - pseudalopex 6y ago
      It became Apple's problem when some of the workers complained to Tim Cook 8 years ago.[1] [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2015/06/11/apple-bag-check-lawsuit/ https://www.macrumors.com/2015/06/11/apple-bag-check-lawsuit...
      - dkonofalski 6y ago
        This is the exact lawsuit in question. Was this link supposed to show something?
        pseudalopex 6y ago
        Apple knew what the managers were doing and could have stopped it.
- soperj 6y ago
  It's sad how many passes people on this site give Apple because they like their design.
  - viro 6y ago
    I worked in retail for 12 years 4 of those at Apple retail. The treatment at Apple was light years ahead of the other companies. Hell its hard to even find a company that will give part time workers health insurance.
    - soperj 6y ago
      whataboutism doesn't excuse apple from paying people for hours they're required to be at work.
      - viro 6y ago
        You understand that statement was nowhere near whataboutism, right? All of the examples were about how Apple on avg. treats their employees very well. Whataboutism would be me bringing up the amazon story as a way to counter the criticism.
  - dkonofalski 6y ago
    Or maybe the reality and truth of the situation is a little less sensational so it doesn't get as many clicks yet people can see through that...
    - soperj 6y ago
      It's not though. They literally were requiring unpaid time at work.
      - dkonofalski 6y ago
        No they weren't. They were requiring bag checks and some managers were making employees clock out first.

falcolas 6y ago

Good. It’s not a part of their commute, and it’s required to start/end working. So, just fricking pay them.

refurb 6y ago
Yeah, the Amazon ruling never made sense to me. If your employer is restricting what you can do with your time (I.e. wait for a security screen before leaving work) then they need to pay you for that time.
- ghshephard 6y ago
  It's not so much what makes sense - I think the vast majority, if not everyone, on HN would agree that it makes sense to pay an employee if they are required to perform a particular time-consuming security screening while on the work site as part of their job. The question is, what does the law say - and, rather than have judges go against the law, and do what they think makes sense, the proper approach is to change the law.
  - refurb 6y ago
    Entirely fair. The court needs to rule based on what's in the law, not what's fair (unless it's clearly unconstitutional). Fair is the responsibility of legislators.
    - anigbrowl 6y ago
      Article II, section 2: The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; Now, this particular suit was presumably brought to court on a legal rather than equitable basis, but courts are in fact empowered to consider cases on the latter basis.
  - spaetzleesser 6y ago
    “The question is, what does the law say“ Correct. In the end the US needs better laws to protect workers. It’s not good that basic things like this need to be decided by the court. Seems that’s in line with the general trend that congress leaves more and more decisions up to the courts instead of clarifying the laws.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

It seems there was a similar case in 2014 about Amazon workers not getting paid for screening time. The US Supreme Court decided unanimously that Amazon did not have to pay them. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/business/supreme-court-rules-against-worker-pay-for-security-screenings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/business/supreme-court-ru... How is this case different from the precedent established by the Amazon case? Edit: In the 2014 case, it was the 9th Circuit that was being overruled. I wonder if this decision is destined for the same fate.

ebg13 6y ago
State requirement vs federal requirement. A better question I think is how did the US Supreme Court get the decision so spectacularly wrong?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  > A better question I think is how did the US Supreme Court get the decision so spectacularly wrong? I think when there is a unanimous decision, you can’t just jump to that premise. Remember, the job of the Supreme Court is to interpret the law. Laws can be bad or unjust (without being unconstitutional) and the Supreme Court will go with what the law says.
  - _qulr 6y ago
    "The case that the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday turned on the meaning of a 1947 law, the Portal-to-Portal Act" This is the problem. The Supreme Court has no choice but to follow the law. It's up to Congress to change the law. This appears to be an outdated, badly written law that doesn't account for present circumstances.
    - j_walter 6y ago
      This is the biggest frustration that many people have with criticism of SCOTUS...they want them to rule one way or another when congress could simply write new laws to be more clear (ok, it's not simple but it is the correct way). Right vs. Left...conservative vs. liberal...doesn't matter if the laws were written correctly to begin with.

skunkworker 6y ago

Will this also apply to the California Supreme Court ruling that Amazon won back in 2013? https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/business/supreme-court-rules-against-worker-pay-for-security-screenings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/business/supreme-court-ru...

granzymes 6y ago
Judging by this quote, there’s a good chance SCOTUS overturns a ruling on this topic by the 9th circuit a second time. > Justice Thomas disagreed, saying the appeals court had “erred by focusing on whether an employer required a particular activity.” The right test, he said, was whether the activity “is tied to the productive work that the employee is employed to perform.” Maybe the 9th will overturn en blanc before it reaches SCOTUS.
- azinman2 6y ago
  That’s a very silly viewpoint. If I have to travel to the North Pole to change a lightbulb, should I only get paid for changing the lightbulb? If the security screening takes 9h, would we really expect employees not to be paid? If so, these would be pretty terrible job arrangements.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    Furthermore, this would open the door to Apple making any time consuming and unreasonable demands. This ia rife for abuse.
  - NationalPark 6y ago
    It's based on the wording of a 1947 law, maybe it's time to change that law. I can see the need for clarity here though. Should employers pay their workers for time spent commuting to a job site/office? Can I live three hours away and make a cool 6 hours of extra wages listening to audio books on my way to/from work?
    - Frondo 6y ago

red_hare 6y ago

As a teenager, I worked running boardwalk games for a very well known theme park. I don't want to say the name, but let's just say it was one with many flags. Every day the workflow was as follows: 1. Sign-in in the employee entrance office. 2. Get your cash bag from costumes. 3. Pick up $200 worth of singles from the cash office for making change which both you and the teller would count out. 4. Go through a security check. 5. Walkthrough the park from the employee entrance to where your game was (often the other side of the park). The whole thing took 20 minutes and we would signed-in to start being paid at the next 15 minute interval from when we arrived at our game. When we checked out, we did the whole process in reverse but would be signed-out for the previous 15 minute interval when we left our game area. All in all, we were losing 40-68 minutes of wages per day. Worse if there were long lines in the office or costumes or the cash office. Of course, we were also only paid $6.15 an hour and had to pay union dues out of that, so in total, it didn't add up to much...

spaced-out 6y ago
>Of course, we were also only paid $6.15 an hour and had to pay union dues out of that, so in total, it didn't add up to much... Not to you, but it definitely added up to a noticeable amount for your employer.
rgbrenner 6y ago
That's a lot.. an hour a day is 1/8th of your pay. If this was year around, that would be (260 work days) $1600.. out of $12800/year total gross pay for full time. You say it's not a lot, but that's only because the job doesn't pay a lot and (I assume) it was short term.
OldHand2018 6y ago
As a teenager, I worked at a Kmart. It didn't take too long to be "promoted" to cashier. They never let anyone near the money room without already being on the clock. You got your till loaded with cash, counted it out, and walked to your register. All on the clock. When done, you took your till back, counted it out, and handed it back in. All on the clock. I'm only writing this as a counter example - not every place was awful about it.
6y ago

bigtex 6y ago

Many decades ago something similar happened with Best Buy employees and waiting to leave the building. My memory is fuzzy but I recall it having to do with some ruling by a government authority. Basically at night shift we could clock out but had to wait for the manager to let us out of the building. Sometimes were were waiting for 15 + minutes. All employees got back pay.

ClumsyPilot 6y ago

This should have been an open-and-shut case, its unbelievable that it took years to re-affirm established norm that employees must be paid for their time, no matter what the firm decides to waste it on. So don't waste it.

ponker 6y ago

The idea that they wouldn’t is laughable/horrifying.

gumby 6y ago

This is really great. How did amazon’s case manage to get the opposite ruling, years ago?

colejohnson66 6y ago
Amazon was ruled using federal law as not everyone in the suit was based in California. In this case, it’s Californians suing under California law.
- gumby 6y ago
  The ninth circuit is a federal court with no jurisdiction over state laws.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Either the Ninth Circuit overstepped their jurisdiction when they ruled[0] on whether Apple violated “California Industrial Welfare Commission Wage Order No. 7”,[1] or they actually do have jurisdiction. My knowledge of the courts is that they are pretty strict about jurisdiction, so I’m led to believe that they actually do have it. Also, they mention that they do:[2] > We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291. [0]: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/09/02/15-17382.pdf https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/09/02/1... [1]: [0;p.9 “III”] [2]: [0;p.9 “I”]
    - gumby 6y ago
      Thanks.

LatteLazy 6y ago

Didn't this already get ruled the other way by scotus?

ensignavenger 6y ago
Federal law in the Amazon case, California law in this Apple case.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  Ah! That makes sense. Thanks!

quesera 6y ago

The fact that Apple let this go to court is disappointing. Apple should do the right thing here, even if they are not legally obligated. Pay retail employees for all work which is required of them. Do not dither over trivialities.

andybak 6y ago
I posted a similar sentiment but you've highlighted the key point. It's (slightly) understandable that this was company policy as it was probably decided somewhere down the food chain. But at the point it became a court case, red lights should have been flashing at the highest levels that this was the kind of thing that paints the company in a terrible light. This is proper "don't be evil" territory. Don't be the bad guys, the cardboard cutout evil capitalists. Nobody on the board thought this was a bad look?
- GeekyBear 6y ago
  >This is proper "don't be evil" territory. It's a bad look, for sure, but common in high end retail. Proper evil territory featuring cardboard cutout evil capitalists looks more like this: >Google, facing an advertising slump caused by the pandemic, has rescinded offers to several thousand people who had agreed to work at the company as temporary and contract workers. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/technology/google-rescinds-job-offers-to-contract-workers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/technology/google-rescind...
  - Loughla 6y ago
    Maybe I'm really way more removed from tech than I thought, but isn't there a difference? Apple: Not paying you for mandated time spent at work for the employers benefit. Google: Cuts temporary and contract workers because of budget problems. What makes the first regular retail action, and the second evil? Because I would argue that both, while garbage, are, in-fact, pretty standard things that bad people do. Contract and temp employees are the first to go when times get bad. That's true across industry, correct? What am I missing?

andybak 6y ago

The fact that this awful nickle and diming of staff doesn't get vetoed by someone with a shred of awareness about PR, morale, good management and anything else beyond short-term balance sheet thinking speaks very ill of the company concerned.

nerdponx 6y ago
They know that the bad PR won't affect their bottom line much, if at all, unless it turns into some kind of Draconian regulation/penalties, which it won't.

spaetzleesser 6y ago

The notion that an employer can mandate things to do but not pay for that time is completely ridiculous. This is a good decision.

ehnto 6y ago

edit: wrong thread

ldoughty 6y ago

Like many people, I worked retail. I never got angry at the security guy trying to let me out the door, but it was frustrating to wait 5 minutes here and there unpaid. I agree that people should be paid for that time.. but I'm also curious where the line is drawn? I left the city to work on a small town because my commute 5 miles/day was 15-20 hours/week. I suppose you can argue many jobs pay well enough to cover that... But people also work retail in those areas. An ideal solution would be to spread out the cities -- encourage more remote working (though not like we currently see)... But in lieu of that, where is the limit? Is employee parking, which is a 5 minute walk to the back of the lot, covered? I had a friend that works at a car factory... If you don't drive that manufacturers car, you park in lot B, an extra minute or three away. Is that any different then being forced to stand at the for to leave a few minutes now and then? (It's not always 5-15 minutes, where this example is a constant). Please accept this as a thought experiment... Not a criticism against better pay for retail. Everyone deserves the pursuit of happiness.

hkai 6y ago
Anecdotally, it seems that most places in the world pay a fixed salary even to the lowest paid workers, instead of paying by the hour. Perhaps this could be a simpler solution to the problem instead of trying to reengineer cities.
thinkingkong 6y ago
In your example you keep saying 5m as though thats the industry standard sla for security. Thats probably fine. The problem is that if the time is unpaid, theres no balancing force to get people through the queue. If you have to spend more on security guards to get the median time to check someone down to 5m, why would you do it if you dont have to?
- ldoughty 6y ago
  My average wait time was less than a minute.. though on a few years days i'd wait 5 minutes or more. I don't disagree with you... Just curious where people think the line is drawn. I personally look at this from the other side -- if we were more accepting of remote work, would cities be so large? Traffic so bad? But obviously, that's not today... So should the Starbucks employee be paid for their commute time? Is it their choice to drive 45 minutes to work? Or is that a mandated job function by applying? What if they were transferred? It's no longer the employee choice, but a business requirement to work there. Like I said, thought experiment. I agree, paying for the time created incentive, probably a good thing.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jws 6y ago

Always amazing to see how things are decided by tiny reading of the English language. The law states… Hours worked’ means the time during which an employee is subject to the control of an employer, and includes all the time the employee is suffered or permitted to work, whether or not required to do so The lower court read that as "hours worked is the time under employer control where the employee can work whether they do it or not". The supremes cut that into two statements at the ", and" and made "subject to the control of the employer" stand alone in addition to when they could be made to work. By definition the supremes are correct, but the judges that ruled the other way are also very experienced judges. Also important… Apple (probably accidentally) forfeited the "de minimis" argument which says employees don't have to be paid for small, incidental periods of time off the clock. I was expecting this case to be a declaration on reasonable "de minimis" requirements. Instead we got a sentence diagramming exercise.

mehrdadn 6y ago
> The lower court read that as "hours worked is the time under employee control where the employee can work whether they do it or not". The supremes cut that into two statements at the ", and" and made "subject to the control of the employer" stand alone in addition to when they could be made to work. (1) I think you meant "time under employer control"? (2) Are you suggesting the lower court just ignored the "is suffered" part?
- jws 6y ago
  1 - thanks, fixed. 2 - the lower court appears to have used the back half of the sentence as describing the components of the first half. Given the supremes’ reading, the back half doesn’t need to even be there, though I guess if you can conceive of someone working for a company but not subject to the control of the company it would cover some ground. Heaven knows I’ve had employees like that.
  - mehrdadn 6y ago
    2 - But if the circuit court used the back of the sentence to read the first half, time going through security screening would've seemed like a pretty obvious example of time that the employee "is suffered", right? My understanding was that's not what happened though. See page 7 for the summary of the district court's reasoning.

blintz 6y ago

Does it strike anyone else as absurd that a $2 trillion company has spent 5 years and untold millions arguing over whether it must compensate employees for the 15 minutes it takes for a company-mandated frisk? In fact, Apple lawyers argued before the California Supreme Court that the time was not mandated since employees could waltz just opt to ‘not bring things with them’. How insane is that - the search is not technically ‘required’ since people don’t technically ‘need’ to bring things with them when they come to work? Who doesn’t need to bring a purse/phone/backpack to work? The whole thing feels straight out of some alternative (dystopian?) future America like Infinite Jest.

krapp 6y ago
>Does it strike anyone else as absurd that a $2 trillion company has spent 5 years and untold millions arguing over whether it must compensate employees for the 15 minutes it takes for a company-mandated frisk? As an Amazon employee, no, it does not.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  It's almost like the big corps are in collusion to keep wages down, whether they employ tons of low-wager workers or only a few.
  - CarbyAu 6y ago
    We all know it is about motivation, money and economies of scale. Motivation - make money for rentiers, otherwise get sued. Economies of scale - many low paid employees means differences in how you treat them can add up to millions. Result - employ people to reduce those millions in costs. Don't blame the man, blame the game.
    - aspenmayer 6y ago
      When the referee blows their whistle, the individual player who transgressed against the rules or spirit of the game is individually punished, and collectively all players benefit from this, even the one penalized. That the one penalized may not agree with or comply with the referee is beyond the scope of accountability of one referee’s ability to enforce the rules of the game.

one2know 6y ago

So does this mean Amazon is going to start paying for their security screenings?

Trias11 6y ago
Sure. They could easily charge thousands of their shady vendors peddling fakes to customers an extra fees to compensate for that.

learc83 6y ago

I worked at Best Buy during college, and if you closed you'd have to wait for a manager to unlock the door for you and check your stuff. If I had to wait more than a minute or so, I'd fill out a time correction for the time I was spent locked in the building. Anytime someone said anything about it, I said if I'm stuck in the building I'm under the company's control, so I should be paid. Eventually managers just started getting there faster when I paged them. A while later Best Buy was sued for this and lost.

Keverw 6y ago
Reminds me of reading an article talking about how Walmart used to lock people in who worked the night shift like stocking shelfs. Seems like Walmart was doing this in the early 2000s, there's an article from 2004 in the New York Times. Didn't know that there was a similar thing at Best Buy, wonder what year that was.
dliff 6y ago
I worked for Best Buy (Geek Squad) as well, about 12 years ago. I had the same experience. Even if they were going to pay me for the time, it felt wrong that they told me I was not able to leave. At times you could be waiting for 15 minutes. It was my first job at 16 years of age, and I didn't have the care or confidence to correct the time punch. At my store they would have to approve time punch modifications, so it would have been obvious if you did that every night. The one person who did get fired for stealing was simply grabbing laptops, removing them from their box, and casually walking out with them.

deviation 6y ago

I don't understand- how were they not being paid? If I had to show up for a 9 to 5 and there was 15 minutes of security screening, I'm showing up at 9 and getting paid for it, not showing up early. Am I OOTL on something here? Were they threatened with termination?

learc83 6y ago
This isn't screening to get in, it's screening to leave. So your shift ends at 5, and they make you wait in a line to get out the door--after you'd already clocked out. And yes, you would be threatened with termination if you didn't wait in the security line

wtn 6y ago

The circumstances of this case seem similar to Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk, which involved workers at an Amazon warehouse in Nevada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_Staffing_Solutions,_Inc._v._Busk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_Staffing_Solutions,_...

d3nj4l 6y ago
This is exactly what I thought about when I saw the headline. Amazon won that case and refused to pay for the security checks, does this ruling mean that they'll have to start paying too?

codyb 6y ago

Awesome that’s great. It’d be interesting if you could some how extend that to commuting, so hourly workers taking trains in for service work are compensated for their times in transit.

piyush_soni 6y ago
I (and probably many people here might) have thought about that in the past as well. It will surely be great from the employee's perspective, but thinking more about it, let's say a work day is 8 hours long. What if I stay 4 hours away from the office? I come and go everyday, and technically get paid for full day's work. There has to be some limit to it from the employer's perspective. Please note that Europe had ruled a few years back that the time spent in commuting 'for work' must be counted as work hours (e.g. plumber travelling to client's location). But employees travelling to the same office everyday were excluded from that rule as far as I remember.
asciident 6y ago
Wouldn't that incentivize people to live further, in less connected areas, increasing urban sprawl, environmental degradation, and segregation?

heimatau 6y ago

Now onto Amazon, meat plants, and many other large-ish businesses that do this corrupt abuse of their workers time.