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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
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 30 2018, @03:24AM (4 children)
Sigh. Look, I get you want to crusade against all the evils of the world but talking like that should be a priority over making a living is absurd. I'm here trying to explain that people need to forget that bullshit and work on getting themselves enough out of the red that they have the luxury of free time to be pissed off in.
Now, could you please stop reading what you want to argue against into my words instead of taking them as they're intended? That's a little bitch move.
Example:
Either you're deliberately misunderstanding me or you're fucking stupid. Employers don't do a single damned thing to keep people from picking whatever profession they feel like going into and you fucking well know it.
The rest of it's equally bullshit for the same reason and has been ignored.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday July 30 2018, @11:38AM (3 children)
> Employers don't do a single damned thing to keep people from picking whatever profession they feel like
Oh come on. Do you really believe that? At the least, the market speaks. Engineering pays better, and everyone knows that. Surely you realize students are strongly influenced by that? I've seen plenty of engineering students who hate engineering but struggle to do it anyway, for the money.
Market rates is hardly all they do. Employers are constantly complaining that schools don't teach the skills that they need in employees. In exchange for donations, they ask universities to jump through hoops that they believe will reduce their own college educated employee expenses, in particular, training. The pushing they do threatens to pervert college into mere vocational training. Thanks in part to that, we get travesties of education such as biology graduates who believe in Intelligent Design. Employers don't just cry for more STEM, they manipulate everyone to get more STEM at the lowest rate they can. H1B, for instance. It sure doesn't start at the college level either, witness all this noise about elevating programming to a fundamental skill that should be taught in elementary.
> talking like that should be a priority over making a living is absurd.
Many engineers wish we could focus entirely on the technical matters that we love. But no one can safely ignore evils of the world. They have great impact on the ability to make a living.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 30 2018, @02:35PM (2 children)
Oh, I get it... You're wanting people to be able to pick whatever career path they like without consequences. See, I never said anything like that was true or gave advice implying it was true though. I was in fact advising them to not pick poorly paying careers if they did not want to be paid poorly. You'd think an engineer could figure out something so basic.
It damned well needs to be. I dunno about you but a lot of people are pissed the fuck off that they went a hundred grand or more into debt because everyone told them college would land them an white collar job that they didn't have to do much actual work in and now they're having to sling coffee at Starbucks to keep from starving.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday July 30 2018, @06:01PM (1 child)
>> The pushing they do threatens to pervert college into mere vocational training.
> It damned well needs to be
No, and that so many people could think otherwise points up one of the biggest failures of current education. Students study all kinds of science all through K-12, and yet many totally miss the boat about the foundations of science. A large part of that is the fault of educators, for not emphasizing it enough. They have a lamentable tendency to gloss over these crucial foundational understandings, to dive directly into the gory details in the hopes that if the students will eventually figure out the big picture themselves. Often, those hopes are in vain.
> everyone told them college would land them an white collar job
The point is a better life. A good job is only one part of that puzzle. There's an infinite amount of bullshit in the universe, and education is crucial for developing the critical thinking skills and habits necessary to sort through it. It's more, much more, than just memorizing a bunch of facts. One of the saddest things to see is ignorant people screwing up their lives or worse, their children's lives, out of fear of nonsense. For instance, the anti-vaxxers who put their children through horrible childhood diseases, perhaps scarring them for life, or even killing them, because they've stuffed themselves full of quackery and conspiracy nonsense over vaccines. Some people still go for palm readings and seances, sort of believe in ghosts, and other superstitious nonsense. There's also prejudice. Education, especially college education, can really open eyes, get young people out of the echo chambers, where they can see for themselves that the world is a more diverse and less vicious and scary place than they were taught.
Education can be one of the most rewarding and fun things to do, when free of the pressure to pass tests and earn grades.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 30 2018, @06:42PM
No, it's not. I give you our current higher education system that is turning out indoctrinated little sexist, racist, and otherwise biggoted drones incapable of the tiniest amount of thought that goes against the approved narrative en masse while the welders, electricians, and plumbers are calling bullshit. Either education is not in fact the key or our colleges are doing the opposite of educating.
I agree but you need a formal setting and a six digit debt right out of highschool like tanks need training wheels. If college cannot give you much better odds at a decent living (It doesn't. The improvement is small and decreasing.), it is a luxury and it's cocktacularly stupid to acquire six digits of debt for a luxury unless you already make seven digits or more a year.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.