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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
by 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 ago1 - 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 ago2 - 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.
- Thorrez 6y agoAre you saying "is suffered" stands alone? What does that mean? I read it as "is suffered to work", meaning the employee is allowed to work, which in this case it sounds like it might not apply.
- mehrdadn 6y agoYes. I understand to "be suffered" here means "to be made to go through something unpleasant/undesired/etc."... which is what a security check is. The point I take being that if you make employees "suffer", you can't use their inability to perform work during that time as an excuse not to pay them. (Note the word in between is "or", not "to".)
- Thorrez 6y agoThat's not my understanding of "be suffered". "He suffers a loss" means a man is suffering a loss. The loss is hurting him. "A loss is suffered" means someone/something is suffering a loss. The loss his hurting someone/something. "The employee is suffered" means someone/something is suffering the employee. The employee is hurting someone/something. Your definition would match "the employee suffers", but that's the opposite of "the employee is suffered".
- mehrdadn 6y ago> "The employee is suffered" means someone/something is suffering the employee. The employee is hurting someone/something. Huh, interesting. How does this make sense in context though? The text says "all the time the employee is suffered or permitted to work" must be compensated, so you're saying the law says that an employee must get paid for all the time he spends doing either of {hurting someone/something, being permitted to work}? Why would there be a law to mandate paying employees that hurt people...?