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Made in us
Last Remaining Whole C'Tan






Pleasant Valley, Iowa

Amazon Warehouse Workers Want to Be Paid for Waiting in Line
By Josh Eidelson October 02, 2014

Amazon.com (AMZN) warehouses are full of stuff people like. To cut down on theft, workers who box and ship it are required to pass through security checkpoints after their shifts, waiting in lines that can take almost 30 minutes to get through.

On Oct. 8 the Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether that time counts as work. In 2010 two former employees of Integrity Staffing Solutions, a temp agency that supplies workers at many of Amazon’s U.S. warehouses, sued the company demanding back pay for the time they spent in security lines after clocking out at Amazon warehouses in Nevada. The security checks, the plaintiffs argued, were required by Integrity and therefore part of the job. (Amazon-employed workers go through the same checks.)

At issue is the scope of a 1947 amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act that says employers don’t have to pay for time spent on work-related activities like getting to or from the office. Nine years later, the Supreme Court established in a pair of rulings that the key is whether the activity in question is “integral and indispensable” to the principal activities workers are paid to do. Butchers at a meatpacking plant, the court found, had to be paid for time spent sharpening their knives, and workers at a battery plant deserved compensation for time spent showering after work to wash off traces of sulfuric acid and lead.

The question in the Integrity case is whether security checks are more like those showers or more like commuting. With screenings increasingly common, the case could have implications for a wide range of workplaces. “There are literally billions and billions of dollars at stake,” says Paul Secunda, who directs the Labor & Employment Law program at Marquette University Law School.

Integrity says it doesn’t owe the workers money because the screenings weren’t directly related to their jobs. “No court has ever held that ‘not breaking the law’ is a principal job activity for which compensation must be paid,” the company’s lawyers wrote in a brief last May. Integrity, based in Wilmington, Del., has also done work for JPMorgan Chase (JPM), ING Direct (COF), and Wal-Mart (WMT). Amazon wasn’t in the original complaint now before the Supreme Court. It has since been added to that suit, which has been consolidated with four similar lawsuits. In court filings it denied the claims. Neither Integrity nor Amazon responded to requests for comment.

Business groups have taken Integrity’s side. “The people here in the warehouse are not employed to go through a security screening,” says Edward Brill, who wrote a brief for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and others. The Departments of Justice and Labor also submitted on Integrity’s behalf. There is, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. wrote, “no clear-cut distinction—either in terms of purpose or effect—between petitioner’s screenings and those that are routine at countless government and private-sector buildings.”

The plaintiffs say there’s plenty that Integrity and other companies could do to make the lines move faster, like hiring more inspectors. That, they say, was one idea behind the Fair Labor Standards Act in the first place: If you make companies pay workers for their time, they’re less likely to waste it.


source

 lord_blackfang wrote:
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 Flinty wrote:
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Made in us
Androgynous Daemon Prince of Slaanesh





Norwalk, Connecticut

If they're being held and prevented from going home from work at a work location, that totally counts!! Give them the pay.

Reality is a nice place to visit, but I'd hate to live there.

Manchu wrote:I'm a Catholic. We eat our God.


Due to work, I can usually only ship any sales or trades out on Saturday morning. Please trade/purchase with this in mind.  
   
Made in us
Been Around the Block





Sounds like either they ought to be paid or the security relaxed.

Go and check out the CYOA thread for some escapist fun

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/618013.page 
   
Made in us
The Conquerer






Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios

Theft must be a pretty big problem for Amazon to need to do this.

Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines

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Norwalk, Connecticut

I think it's a good measure. But if work is actively keeping them after, they should be paid. It's not like sitting in a traffic jam waiting to get home from the office.

Reality is a nice place to visit, but I'd hate to live there.

Manchu wrote:I'm a Catholic. We eat our God.


Due to work, I can usually only ship any sales or trades out on Saturday morning. Please trade/purchase with this in mind.  
   
Made in gb
Lord Commander in a Plush Chair





Beijing

I don't see why your employer should be allowed to hold you beyond the shift hours you are being paid for. Half hour is unacceptable. The solution is to drop the security or extend shift hours to include leeway for security checks they wish to put into place.
   
Made in us
Last Remaining Whole C'Tan






Pleasant Valley, Iowa

I think it's a pretty crazy argument that they are on company property performing a work-required function in keeping with company policy - presumably if they leave they are fired, yes? - and yet somehow this is not considered work.

They are essentially stealing 130 hours of work from every employee a year.

I suspect if the time-clocks were on the other side of the lines, they would be no 30 minute long lines.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/10/05 00:52:56


 lord_blackfang wrote:
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 Flinty wrote:
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Made in us
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USA

 Grey Templar wrote:
Theft must be a pretty big problem for Amazon to need to do this.


It's not. FedEx and UPS do the same thing, but it seems to be more grounded in "someone could steal stuff" than "stuff is being stolen." Theft is likely inevitable in their business, but having seen similar situations, it can be rather absurd how anal these companies are about this. Not sure people should be paid for it, but then I've never had to wait 30 minutes to enter or leave the building. I've gotten through airport security faster than that.

   
Made in us
Deva Functionary




Home

Do security sweep and then clock out. Security sweeps would become more efficient and workers would go home on time or get ot.
   
Made in ca
Fixture of Dakka





Ottawa Ontario Canada

Yeah this makes no sense, pay them.

I worked in sales at a big box electronics store, the manager would always have end of day meetings that were off the books. He would try and strong arm people into staying "it's not optional" the inevitable response was "it is when you're not currently paying me". It's bad enough the guy wanted people to stay past 6pm on a sunday.

Do you play 30k? It'd be a lot cooler if you did.  
   
Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka






Glasgow, Scotland

When I was working over the summer there I'd say that every other day I was kept longer than ten minutes after my shift ended to be relieved. The other staff took the attitude that they should just disappear as soon as their shift ended (uh, or way before then in some cases), but nah, not me. On more than one occasion I was stood about for over half an hour (in cases an hour) waiting for the evening staff to clock on. Like hell if I didn't have my supervisor mark me down for those wages (though the original one quit after a few days, and her replacement didn't appreciate me not putting up with issues). Ten minutes, half an hour maybe sure, but anything over that then I'd expect to be paid for it. If the company has anything that it needs you for over those hours then either accommodate for it during work time, or pay people for it. People have crap to do outside of their jobs, but I suspect that those that force this kind of thing on their staff don't appreciate people who complain too much. =P
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut






Think the diamond miners in South Africa(?) are on the clock still when they process out from work to the point they are out the door
X-Rays
Shower
Physical searches
Slew of other crazy inspections to prevent diamond theft

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Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios

 Jihadin wrote:
Think the diamond miners in South Africa(?) are on the clock still when they process out from work to the point they are out the door
X-Rays
Shower
Physical searches
Slew of other crazy inspections to prevent diamond theft


I don't think most jobs like that are hourly wages. Most things like mining are either profit compensation or a set amount based on the days you worked.

Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines

Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.

MURICA!!! IN SPESS!!! 
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut






 Grey Templar wrote:
 Jihadin wrote:
Think the diamond miners in South Africa(?) are on the clock still when they process out from work to the point they are out the door
X-Rays
Shower
Physical searches
Slew of other crazy inspections to prevent diamond theft


I don't think most jobs like that are hourly wages. Most things like mining are either profit compensation or a set amount based on the days you worked.


Oh well, look at it as airport security screening then

Proud Member of the Infidels of OIF/OEF
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Made in us
Androgynous Daemon Prince of Slaanesh





Norwalk, Connecticut

^Yup, and I get paid for that time!!

Reality is a nice place to visit, but I'd hate to live there.

Manchu wrote:I'm a Catholic. We eat our God.


Due to work, I can usually only ship any sales or trades out on Saturday morning. Please trade/purchase with this in mind.  
   
Made in us
Heroic Senior Officer





Western Kentucky

 Ouze wrote:
Amazon Warehouse Workers Want to Be Paid for Waiting in Line
By Josh Eidelson October 02, 2014

Amazon.com (AMZN) warehouses are full of stuff people like. To cut down on theft, workers who box and ship it are required to pass through security checkpoints after their shifts, waiting in lines that can take almost 30 minutes to get through.

On Oct. 8 the Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether that time counts as work. In 2010 two former employees of Integrity Staffing Solutions, a temp agency that supplies workers at many of Amazon’s U.S. warehouses, sued the company demanding back pay for the time they spent in security lines after clocking out at Amazon warehouses in Nevada. The security checks, the plaintiffs argued, were required by Integrity and therefore part of the job. (Amazon-employed workers go through the same checks.)

At issue is the scope of a 1947 amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act that says employers don’t have to pay for time spent on work-related activities like getting to or from the office. Nine years later, the Supreme Court established in a pair of rulings that the key is whether the activity in question is “integral and indispensable” to the principal activities workers are paid to do. Butchers at a meatpacking plant, the court found, had to be paid for time spent sharpening their knives, and workers at a battery plant deserved compensation for time spent showering after work to wash off traces of sulfuric acid and lead.

The question in the Integrity case is whether security checks are more like those showers or more like commuting. With screenings increasingly common, the case could have implications for a wide range of workplaces. “There are literally billions and billions of dollars at stake,” says Paul Secunda, who directs the Labor & Employment Law program at Marquette University Law School.

Integrity says it doesn’t owe the workers money because the screenings weren’t directly related to their jobs. “No court has ever held that ‘not breaking the law’ is a principal job activity for which compensation must be paid,” the company’s lawyers wrote in a brief last May. Integrity, based in Wilmington, Del., has also done work for JPMorgan Chase (JPM), ING Direct (COF), and Wal-Mart (WMT). Amazon wasn’t in the original complaint now before the Supreme Court. It has since been added to that suit, which has been consolidated with four similar lawsuits. In court filings it denied the claims. Neither Integrity nor Amazon responded to requests for comment.

Business groups have taken Integrity’s side. “The people here in the warehouse are not employed to go through a security screening,” says Edward Brill, who wrote a brief for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and others. The Departments of Justice and Labor also submitted on Integrity’s behalf. There is, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. wrote, “no clear-cut distinction—either in terms of purpose or effect—between petitioner’s screenings and those that are routine at countless government and private-sector buildings.”

The plaintiffs say there’s plenty that Integrity and other companies could do to make the lines move faster, like hiring more inspectors. That, they say, was one idea behind the Fair Labor Standards Act in the first place: If you make companies pay workers for their time, they’re less likely to waste it.


source

I've worked the warehouse job they're talking about for 2 holiday seasons, and this isn't exaggerated. You would go on 15, and the 15 starts technically the moment you stop "picking" (aka grabbing things off the shelves) That meant you had to put the cart up, put away the scanner, and get through the 3 lane checking line. For Lex 1 (the warehouse I worked at) I would be trying to get through 3 lanes with roughly 100 other people. That was counted as part of our 15. Not to mention that you had to be picking again the moment the 15 ended, which meant you had to already be back at the work area with the scanner and a cart ready to go. If you knew where you would be next it wouldnt be so bad, but the scanner could send you anywhere in the massive warehouse when you logged back in, often a completely different corner of the warehouse.

By the time you got through the line, over half your 15 was gone. The only way to truly get a full 15 was to sneak back towards the break room as the 15 approached so you could be first in line or just straight up going to the break room early. We would often get chewed out for taking too long on our 15's even though most people barely got 5-10 minutes of break.

'I've played Guard for years, and the best piece of advice is to always utilize the Guard's best special rule: "we roll more dice than you" ' - stormleader

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Made in us
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Ephrata, PA

This was in the news months ago for Apple, I think there was even an article on here about it:

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/retail-workers-york-california-sue-apple-unpaid-wages/story?id=19826977


Point being, if you have to be held up more then a few minutes, you should be paid for it.

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Decrepit Dakkanaut





UK

either pay them,

or

have sufficient security on that nobody has to wait, workers get screened immediately on clocking out

 
   
Made in us
Fireknife Shas'el




Seems kind of simple. If it's required for the job, then you pay them for it for doing it and ya it would be a very good idea to not have your employees wasting half an hour in line. I mean boy that is wasteful.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/10/05 00:39:11


 
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut






Should get advise from TSA how to speed it up....

Proud Member of the Infidels of OIF/OEF
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Made in us
Blood Angel Captain Wracked with Visions






As part of the duties of their employment they should be paid for it

 
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut





Amazon warehouse associates are currently being hired at around $12 per hour. Amazon has 132,600 employees as of June 2014. If every employee got $6 extra per day, then it would cost Amazon around 200 million dollars a year.

On the other hand, Amazon CEO Jeffrey Bezos is worth 32 billion (The 17th wealthiest person in the world). He probably has that kind of money down the back of his sofa.

Sickening really...

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/10/05 02:27:18


 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





USA

A company that grows by a pretty decent percentage every year doesn't want to pay their workers for the time they're at work.

Shocker.

Shadowkeepers (4000 points)
3rd Company (3000 points) 
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut






I just placed an order on Amazon..

Proud Member of the Infidels of OIF/OEF
No longer defending the US Military or US Gov't. Just going to ""**feed into your fears**"" with Duffel Blog
Did not fight my way up on top the food chain to become a Vegan...
Warning: Stupid Allergy
Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend
DE 6700
Harlequin 2500
RIP Muhammad Ali.

Jihadin, Scorched Earth 791. Leader of the Pork Eating Crusader. Alpha


 
   
Made in us
Most Glorious Grey Seer





Everett, WA

Were you searched on your way out?

 
   
Made in us
Last Remaining Whole C'Tan






Pleasant Valley, Iowa

 Jihadin wrote:
Should get advise from TSA how to speed it up....


Listen, I don't see how grabbing their junk and stealing their electronics is going to make that go faster.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.

 Flinty wrote:
The benefit of slate is that its.actually a.rock with rock like properties. The downside is that it's a rock
 
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut






 Ouze wrote:
 Jihadin wrote:
Should get advise from TSA how to speed it up....


Dude them to ensure the cup in a secure firm grip and not to kiss me


Listen, I don't see how grabbing their junk and stealing their electronics is going to make that go faster.


But they wear gloves at TSA...

Proud Member of the Infidels of OIF/OEF
No longer defending the US Military or US Gov't. Just going to ""**feed into your fears**"" with Duffel Blog
Did not fight my way up on top the food chain to become a Vegan...
Warning: Stupid Allergy
Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend
DE 6700
Harlequin 2500
RIP Muhammad Ali.

Jihadin, Scorched Earth 791. Leader of the Pork Eating Crusader. Alpha


 
   
Made in us
Last Remaining Whole C'Tan






Pleasant Valley, Iowa

You know, it's sort of interesting how poor Walmart's reputation is compared with Amazon among customers despite Amazon's pretty universally panned employment environment, from warehouse to offices all the way up. Amazon seems like a pretty crappy place to work.


 lord_blackfang wrote:
Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.

 Flinty wrote:
The benefit of slate is that its.actually a.rock with rock like properties. The downside is that it's a rock
 
   
Made in us
Dwarf High King with New Book of Grudges




United States

 LordofHats wrote:
I've gotten through airport security faster than that.


The only time it has ever taken me anything close to 30 minutes to pass through security is when flying internationally, and then usually only on the US end or when flying between countries of which I'm not a citizen.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. 
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut






Wonder how Google treat their employee's

Proud Member of the Infidels of OIF/OEF
No longer defending the US Military or US Gov't. Just going to ""**feed into your fears**"" with Duffel Blog
Did not fight my way up on top the food chain to become a Vegan...
Warning: Stupid Allergy
Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend
DE 6700
Harlequin 2500
RIP Muhammad Ali.

Jihadin, Scorched Earth 791. Leader of the Pork Eating Crusader. Alpha


 
   
 
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