Pay Me, or Let Me Go Home!
August 3, 2015 by Andrew Baker
Court OK’s Lawsuit Claiming Wages for Time Spent Undergoing Anti-Theft Searches at End of Shift.
A federal court has given the green light for a class action lawsuit to proceed challenging Apple’s failure to pay its Apple Store employees wages for the time employees spend after the end of their shift while a manager or security guard searches the employees’ personal bags. Employees claim it takes up to 20 minutes, or even longer during busy periods, to locate a manager or guard to perform the search.
The fact pattern here is almost identical to that of a lawsuit brought by Amazon warehouse employees who had to wait before leaving the warehouse at the end of the day for a security guard inspection. That lawsuit was thrown out last year by the U.S. Supreme Court –but that lawsuit relied on federal wage-and-hour law. The Apple employees are invoking California law, and California wage-and-hour law is much more protective of employees.
The judge in the Apple lawsuit referred to a 2000 California Supreme Court decision that ruled the compensability of employee time depended on the level of the employer’s control over its employees. That decision found that the time employees spent riding an employer-provided bus to work was compensable not only because their employer required them to ride the bus, but also because the employer prohibited employees from commuting in their own cars and thus employees could not choose to run personal errands along their commutes or to leave work early for a personal appointment.
Given this precedent, the judge decided that the Apple Store employees should have a chance to prove in court that Apple’s bag-search practice gives Apple enough control over its employees, after the employees have clocked out, that Apple must reimburse the employees for the time spent waiting for and going through the post-shift search.
Readers may also find these articles of interest:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/16/us-apple-workers-lawsuit-idUSKCN0PQ1XO20150716
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Apple-employees-file-class-action-suit-on-bag-6397542.php
http://www.macrumors.com/2015/07/16/apple-bag-checking-class-action-lawsuit/
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