Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following (paywalled) story:
July 26, 2018
Starbucks Corp. must pay employees for off-the-clock work such as closing and locking stores, the California Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in a decision that could have broad implications for companies that employ workers paid by the hour across the state.
The decision is a departure from a federal standard that gives employers greater leeway to deny workers’ compensation for short tasks, such as putting on a uniform, that are performed before they clock in or after they clock out.
More details are available from pbs.org:
The ruling came in a lawsuit by a Starbucks employee, Douglas Troester, who argued that he was entitled to be paid for the time he spent closing the store after he had clocked out.
Troester said he activated the store alarm, locked the front door and walked co-workers to their cars — tasks that required him to work for four to 10 additional minutes a day.
An attorney for Starbucks referred comment to the company. Starbucks did not immediately have comment.
A U.S. District Court rejected Troester’s lawsuit on the grounds that the time he spent on those tasks was minimal. But the California Supreme Court said a few extra minutes of work each day could “add up.”
Troester was seeking payment for 12 hours and 50 minutes of work over a 17-month period. At $8 an hour, that amounts to $102.67, the California Supreme Court said.
“That is enough to pay a utility bill, buy a week of groceries, or cover a month of bus fares,” Associate Justice Goodwin Liu wrote. “What Starbucks calls ‘de minimis’ is not de minimis at all to many ordinary people who work for hourly wages.”
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(Score: 2) by Nuke on Sunday July 29 2018, @03:04PM (2 children)
Doesn't that cut both ways? The additional wage Starbucks would need to pay for that time is also "minimal". In fact it would be more minimal to Starbucks than it is to an employee. When I worked in such jobs, clearing up and closing up were seen (by both employer and employee) as part of the job, such that you could be walking out of the door at 5pm or whatever the nominal finish time was. In fact I rarely did as it was never made into an issue, eg I might have be chatting to the boss about something. But that was in the UK and 25 years ago before certain corporates soured things.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by deimtee on Sunday July 29 2018, @09:13PM
I think the point of this is that the clock-card machine was inside the store, so locking up and walking employees to their cars had to be after he had clocked out. A reasonable solution would have been to automatically add 5 minutes to the clock-out time of whoever was designated as the lock-up employee.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Monday July 30 2018, @03:39AM
Typical pro-business bullshit from the courts.