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The Supreme Court of the United States has issued a unanimous decision that security screenings after the work day, regardless of the amount of time they take to perform, do not qualify for remuneration. The decision focuses on the Portal-To-Portal Act of 1947 which defines a workday that specifically excludes those activities "incidental" to an employee's primary responsibilities.
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SCOTUS Finds in Favor of Amazon, No Pay for Mandatory Security Screenings
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by iamjacksusername on Thursday December 11 2014, @04:21PM
When the Supreme Court makes unanimous decisions, it typically for either of two reasons.
1) A political message meant for the other branches of the government. This is the equivalent of nailing the decision to their foreheads. It says to the other branches, "This is the way it is going to be so it would be best if you got on-board." This is one of the primary reasons that you see Thomas or Scalia dissents in 8-1 decisions. The Court is well-aware of the political significance of a 9-0 decision so, when they are confronted with a case that all the justices agree, they will typically look for one dissenter so as not to water-down the political significance of a 9-0 ruling.
2) The law is quite clear on the subject. The court feels that the law is very clear and is telling the lower courts exactly how they need to rule because there seems to be some confusion (I am looking at you 9th Circuit Court). This usually involves cases where there are no constitutional issues and the case has conflicting Circuit Court rulings on the same language with very similar cases.
This decision appears to be the latter. The law, rightly or wrongly, is quite clear on the subject. The Court is not in the business of re-writing statutes (ACA decision not withstanding) so the Court has told the lower courts how to rule. The solution changing it is to change the law through the legislature.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11 2014, @05:03PM
After wading through the same nihilistic, naive, and quite frankly, stupid insights about circuses and other overblown crap that gets shoved into every article, your comment is a delightful, and insightful, breath of fresh air that left me appreciating a point of view I hadn't considered. I'm sorry I don't have a mod point to give you.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday December 11 2014, @07:59PM
Naïvely, perhaps, I would parse that to mean that payment is optional if the activity is optional - parsing 'indispensable' as the opposite of 'optional' which is after all a synonym to 'dispensable.' So to me, again perhaps naïvely, it seems to say that if this procedure is a *required* part of employment, then it is 'indispensable' to their job duties, and must be paid.
The prior *precedent* is clear here, and cited in the opinion, but the law itself does not seem to be so clearly in agreement with their decision.
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(Score: 1) by iamjacksusername on Thursday December 11 2014, @10:08PM
In this case, I would say that the Court feels the law is clear because they feel the meaning of the statutory language is settled law. The 9-0 ruling is telling the lower courts "don't even think about going near this interpretation." E.g., "optional" and "indispensable", as you mentioned, have specific legal meanings in the context of this statute.
(Score: 1) by forkazoo on Friday December 12 2014, @02:12AM
Yeah, if somebody pays me to stick around, then I'll do my job. If not, I'll leave. If they stop paying me but won't let me leave, then that's kidnapping or false imprisonment or something along those lines. It also provides Amazon with a artehr amazing incentive to just not bother to have the security people be there sometimes. If you can't leave until security gets here, you may as well just get a head start on tomorrow's work to kill the time, even though you clocked out...
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday December 12 2014, @08:51PM
What the summary said was that you had to stand in line. That makes it a bit hard to do tomorrows work today.
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