Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Sunday July 29 2018, @07:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the all-work-and-no-pay-makes-Jack-a-litigious-boy dept.

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.”

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by srobert on Sunday July 29 2018, @08:32PM (12 children)

    by srobert (4803) on Sunday July 29 2018, @08:32PM (#714450)

    You and the AC are both insightful. It occurs to me that I've been pretty successful at this point in my life. But I'm realistic enough to know that it's about half because of my own efforts, and the other half because of serendipity. Without a lot of dumb luck, I'd still be mopping the floors at Burger King. It does seem like it would frighten the crap out of them if they acknowledged the extent to which their success arose because of circumstances beyond their control.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 30 2018, @04:11AM (11 children)

    You know, people who look ahead, see hurdles that may come to be, expect unforeseen hurdles to crop up now and then, and plan accordingly do in fact exist. Making the implied claim that it's an unattainable skill belittles every human being you declare a victim of circumstance.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday July 30 2018, @02:23PM (10 children)

      by Thexalon (636) on Monday July 30 2018, @02:23PM (#714729)

      Here's where I think you go wrong: You believe you got where you are today because you planned ahead. I think you got where you are today because you planned ahead, and you had access to the resources needed to make those advanced plans something you could actually do.

      For instance, you might have planned ahead to attend college, and did so, and that gave you a chance to work in a lucrative profession. Good job, you probably did well in school to make that happen. But I know for certain that I had high school classmates who were smart and did well in school (acing calculus and top-track physics without any difficulty whatsoever) who didn't attend college because their families couldn't afford to help no way no how, and there basically weren't avenues for them being able to attend via work or scholarships or something (and no, it wasn't like they didn't make an effort to look). A couple of them shipped out with the Navy, one was working as a medical secretary last time I checked, so they weren't exactly in the poorhouse, but they didn't get as far as I did academically solely because their parents had no assets.

      Or you might have saved up to buy a home. Smart move, and congratulations. But impossible for the majority of Americans who cannot save anything, and not because they're profligate spenders or something.

      And I'm guessing you have health insurance. Even now, with Obamacare, about 1 in 20 Americans don't. Before Obamacare, closer to 3 in 20 Americans didn't. And what that means is that any injury or illness could blow away any savings you have. Well, back in those days I was one of those without insurance, because my employer was tiny and couldn't offer me a policy, and nobody was willing to even consider selling me an individual policy due to conditions I was born with that barely affect me today, and I had to lie there one day thinking "Do I go to the ER for belly pain that may be appendicitis or may be just be a minor problem with something I ate? If I don't go, it could cost me my life, if I go it will cost me my life savings." I didn't go, and it turned out to be the right call, but that was luck, not planning.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 30 2018, @03:21PM (9 children)

        ...and you had access to the resources needed to make those advanced plans something you could actually do.

        Look, you're assuming some massive amounts of bullshit here. In something like three years or so I took myself from having a GED and no college, living in the woods, bathing in the drainage ditch, and detailing cars for under minimum wage to charging $350/hr consulting fees. Now not everyone's as smart as me and can teach themselves anything they like, so it may take them longer, but it's no way in hell impossible for anyone in the US to get out of poverty if they're willing to put in the thought and effort necessary to do so.

        Don't take that to mean I'm saying it's easy. It's fucking well not. Not even a little bit. You have to bust your ass both mentally and physically for a nontrivial amount of time. It's very much possible for pretty much everyone though. Individually. It's not practically possible for everyone to get out of poverty because of the way it's calculated, short of communism which really just makes sure everyone is in poverty rather than only some of the people.

        And I'm guessing you have health insurance.

        Man, you have missed the mark on every single assumption you made above. I have free healthcare if it's worth driving 600 miles to get it but I don't otherwise have anything. Short of an expensive ailment that I can see coming ahead of time, I'm in the same boat as everyone else. I do not go to the doctor unless I'm about to die, have a broken bone that needs properly set, or the like. It's a waste of time and everyone's resources. Mine in particular but also the healthcare folks who have to spend time on me instead of doing important shit that won't go away with some neosporin or an aspirin.

        Now let's get to an important bit here... how many people have you seen in your life who spent more on their car than they did on their house/apartment/etc... over a year's span? Me, I see quite a lot. Every. Single. Day.

        You think it might help to put some effort into getting people to choose not to make abysmally stupid financial decisions?

        Have you ever thought to yourself "I may be eating ramen noodles twice a day but at least I can quote Shakespeare,"? Yeah, neither has anyone else. Why are we teaching it in highschool instead of how to not be a fucking moron with your money?

        Our priorities are so fucked up in this nation that we pretty damned well deserve the shitstorm we're reaping from them.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday July 30 2018, @08:43PM (5 children)

          by Thexalon (636) on Monday July 30 2018, @08:43PM (#714926)

          In something like three years or so I took myself from having a GED and no college, living in the woods, bathing in the drainage ditch, and detailing cars for under minimum wage to charging $350/hr consulting fees.

          How?

          Because if someone comes up to me and says something along the lines of "I have no official education or experience, but I'm the world's best at _______, believe me! I'm only available if you pay me $350 per hour!" I'm going to respond with something along the lines of "You probably aren't the world's best" and have nothing to do with you whatsoever. Even if you came to me with 1-2 years of experience on your resume, I'm not paying that rate, no matter what your sales pitch. Oh, and if you conveniently left that out of your sales pitch, make no mistake, I'm going to look up you or your company to find out what your reputation is before hiring you.

          All that means somebody gave you a big break. And you were lucky you were the one to get the big break and not the other people easily found at public libraries across the country trying to do what you did.

          I do not go to the doctor unless I'm about to die, have a broken bone that needs properly set, or the like. It's a waste of time and everyone's resources.

          So you know: 6 months ago, I lost one friend who had taken that approach to health care, because he had taken that approach to health care, had a seizure, and froze to death. Yesterday, I came scarily close to having to bury another one (he stopped breathing long enough to turn blue), for the same reason. A relatively cheap basic physical can and not infrequently does save you a much bigger problem later on.

          --
          The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
          • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 31 2018, @02:53AM (4 children)

            The local library's books and its Internet connection for starters. Half a semester of CS in college before I decided it was too fucking slow and wasting my time with irrelevant but required courses. A year or so after I made the decision I took a shit job building/repairing computers at a shop that also ran a local ISP. Less than a year after that I was lead admin. A year after that I was charging that company what they used to bill me out for to customers.

            Those are just points in time though. The real "how" is I was sick of being poor, found something that could make me otherwise, and trained myself to be able to do it. The entire time I was reading and learning absolutely everything I possibly could that looked like it could make me more valuable. Eight hours a day then go home and play video games, smoke pot, and hang with friends? Yeah, no. Add another six or seven on to that every workday and probably closer to twelve on days off. I built and wiped Linux servers for practice until I could do it in my sleep and even a few FreeBSD ones even though it was obvious that would never be a first class server environment. Then I started breaking them to see how to fix them. I got everyone at the ISP to have root wars on a clone of our primary server so I could learn better security. In short, I worked my entire ass off all day long pretty much every single day until I was where I wanted to be.

            A relatively cheap basic physical can and not infrequently does save you a much bigger problem later on.

            Probably, yeah. I'm not concerned with living as long as humanly possible though. It holds no attraction to be so old and feeble that someone else has to wipe my ass for me. I'd rather die while I'm still able to do what I like. In fact, I'd very much prefer it to be a surprise as to spend years knowing something is going to kill me soon and trying to avoid it anyway. That's not life, that's just death by installment.

            --
            My rights don't end where your fear begins.
            • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 31 2018, @04:16PM (3 children)

              by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday July 31 2018, @04:16PM (#715253)

              I'd say that your self-improvement was definitely one of the factors leading to your current success. Another factor was the owner of the shop that you worked at hiring you in the first place when you might not have even had an address, recognizing your skill level as an admin, promoting you up to lead, and then hiring you as a contractor for basically zero profit - I hope you give that person a lot of credit when you think about your life story. And yet another factor has nothing to do with you at all, which is that business was good enough for that shop that they could afford to hire you, and had an opening for that promotion or were able to create the position.

              --
              The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
              • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 31 2018, @07:12PM (2 children)

                That wasn't luck. I didn't randomly pick places to apply for a job, I picked the ones that would do me some good to get hired at. Then I sold myself in the interviews. The boss man, though we did get along on a friendly enough basis, made a lot of money on me, so thanks are not warranted. As for the contracting work, that was for them not subcontracted from them. They got themselves in a pickle and I was no longer there to bail them out, so they had to hire me at consultant wages.

                And yet another factor has nothing to do with you at all, which is that business was good enough for that shop that they could afford to hire you, and had an opening for that promotion or were able to create the position.

                See, this tells me that you think I'm a moron who just drifts around on the tide of life. That was by design, not in any way luck. If business hadn't been good in the field, I would have never picked it to begin with. If business for that company had not been good or it had not had the path forward I wanted, I would have never applied. Believe it or not, it's not mandatory to let life just throw you wherever it wants. Whoever sold you this line of bullshit needs their ass beat for ruining your life.

                --
                My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 31 2018, @07:47PM (1 child)

                  by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday July 31 2018, @07:47PM (#715358)

                  The boss man, though we did get along on a friendly enough basis, made a lot of money on me, so thanks are not warranted.

                  My thinking is that this seems like it was a mutually beneficial arrangement: You got a way to break into a field you had no experience or formal education in, and he got a top-quality employee for a while. You got paid, he got paid. That sounds like a relationship that should be friendly at least, even now that you are no longer working for them. You may have also had co-workers who helped you improve your skills. I'm not saying you have to be effusively praising him from the rooftops, but he didn't have to invest in you and he obviously chose to.

                  For comparison's sake, I consult for a number of my former employers, in no small part because I got along great with the bosses at those places, and didn't burn bridges on the way out the door.

                  As for your final paragraph, you are under a very mistaken impression if you think that my life is ruined. I would use more money if I had it, but I'm doing just fine: I live exactly where I want to, work about as much as I'd like to (considerably less than 8 hours a day, I might add) mostly on stuff that I benefit from directly, have good people around me, and no debt sucking cash out of my pocket. I spent a week on a relaxing and enjoyable vacation in exchange for a couple of hours of work providing musical entertainment. A lot of people would love to swap situations with me.

                  --
                  The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
                  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 31 2018, @09:07PM

                    He didn't hire me for my benefit. He hired me for the benefit of his company in an entry-level job that didn't require experience or training. We had a friendly relationship because he had a good sense of humor, knew the value of the employees he had, and treated them according to their value. See, when you exchange value for value, neither party owes any sort of debt to the other.

                    And before you go down that road, no, it was not luck that I had a good boss. The people he answered to also knew what they were doing and hired someone who would administer the company the way they wanted it administered. I knew this before I ever walked in the door.

                    The only arguable bit of luck was that someone better than I did not show up asking for that entry-level job. It wouldn't have mattered if someone had though. I don't put all my eggs in one basket and I planned for a whole lot more setbacks than I got. "Luck" is just an excuse for those who let the universe be in charge of their lives instead of taking charge themselves.

                    As for your final paragraph, good for you. Sincerely. I don't wish failure and misery on anyone; I just recognize it's a hell of a lot more likely for those who just let life do whatever it likes to them and spend their time thinking up excuses instead of solutions.

                    --
                    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 3, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Monday July 30 2018, @09:44PM (2 children)

          by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Monday July 30 2018, @09:44PM (#714957) Homepage Journal

          At a certain time in my life, I was poorer than you have ever been. Possibly poorer than you can imagine. I'll tell you, I was with Ivanka -- my favorite daughter -- we were in the limo. I said to the driver, stop for a moment. And I said to Ivanka, "see that bum? He has a billion dollars more than me." That's how deeply in debt I was. I owed a billion dollars. And now I'm very rich, I have more than $10 billion. But it wasn't easy. It has not been easy for me. And you know I started off in Brooklyn, my father gave me a small loan of a million dollars. Marco said I got $200 million from my father. I wish. I wish. I got a very, very small loan from my father many years ago. I built that into a massive empire and I paid my father back that loan. The number is wrong by a factor of hundreds, I mean, by a fortune. I got a small loan. I started a business. I came into Manhattan and I had to pay him back, and I had to pay him back with interest. But I came into Manhattan, I started buying up properties, and I did great. I did a good job. But I was always told that would never work. I made it work. With a lot of sweat. A lot of negotiating. And a lot of VERY HARD THINKING!

          • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday July 31 2018, @02:23AM

            by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Tuesday July 31 2018, @02:23AM (#715031) Homepage Journal

            (cont) In the early 1990s, I owed billions of dollars and many people thought I was finished. I refused to give in to the negative circumstances and I never lost faith in myself. I didn't believe I was finished even when the newspapers were saying so. I refused to give up. Defeat is not in my vocabulary.

          • (Score: 2) by srobert on Tuesday July 31 2018, @02:40AM

            by srobert (4803) on Tuesday July 31 2018, @02:40AM (#715036)

            LOL. You are in top form today sir.