John Stewart
Fri, 07/23/2021
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court stopped Amazon’s practice of forcing its workers to wait, unpaid, as they undergo security screenings for their employer’s benefit in a landmark decision issued on July 21, 2021. Heimbach et al v. Amazon.com, Inc., et al, No. 43 EAP 2019 (Pa. July 21, 2021). The opinion is a game-changer for employees of other companies in Pennsylvania and elsewhere who have relied on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk, 574 U.S. 27 (2014), to claim that their employees should not be paid for their pre-shift and post-shift time.
Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk is the 2014 decision (also involving Amazon employees) in which the Supreme Court interpreted the Portal-to-Portal Act to render time spent waiting in line and undergoing a mandatory security/loss-prevention screening to be non-compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act (the federal overtime law known as the FLSA). To be compensable under the FLSA, the Court reasoned, pre-shift or post-shift time must be spent performing one of the employees’ “principal activities” or be “integral and indispensable” to those principal activities. Undergoing a mandatory security screening—even for Amazon’s benefit—was ruled non-compensable because it was not “integral and indispensable” to the warehouse employees’ job duties.
Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court, however, has changed that. Under Pennsylvania’s Minimum Wage Act (PMWA), unlike federal law, Amazon must pay its employees for the time spent waiting in line and undergoing screenings before or after their shifts. The Pennsylvania legislature, the Court explained, had never formally adopted the federal Portal-to-Portal Act or any other legislation that would exclude “preliminary” or “postliminary” activities from work time. In the Court’s view, applying the Portal-to-Portal Act in Pennsylvania would be “incongruous with [the Pennsylvania] legislature’s expressly stated purpose for enacting the PMWA,” which was to “address ‘[t]he evils of unreasonable and unfair wages,’ and to ameliorate employer practices which serve to artificially depress those wages.” Instead, under Pennsylvania law, compensable time includes, among other things, “any time the employee is required by the employer to be on the premises of the employer.” Because the Amazon workers were required to undergo their on-site screening while on employer premises, the Court ruled that time is work time and Amazon must pay.
Additionally, the Court rejected the application of the “de minimis” doctrine, which can render certain “insubstantial” or “insignificant” periods of time spent working before or after shifts non-compensable under the FLSA. Per the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the PMWA “unambiguously requires payment for ‘all hours worked,’ signifying the legislature’s intent that any portion of the hours worked by an employee does not constitute a mere trifle,” and must be paid.
For Amazon employees in Pennsylvania, of course, this decision has immediate and obvious importance: it is now clearly unlawful for Amazon to continue to force its employees to wait in line on its premises without paying them. But security screenings are not the only preliminary or postliminary activities that are required, on premises, by employers. Employees required to arrive early at work to change clothes, to prepare for work, or indeed for any purpose at all, must now be paid in Pennsylvania. And Pennsylvania is not the only state that has not adopted the federal Portal-to-Portal Act or its equivalent. Washington, D.C., for example, has explicitly rejected the Portal-to-Portal Act’s application. See D.C. Code § 32-1002(10).
If you are interested in learning more, or if you think you may be entitled pay for pre-shift or post-shift activities, please contact us at info@mselaborlaw.com.
