From Publisher’s Lunch:
In other Amazon news, on Wednesday the Supreme Court will hear a lawsuit by company workers over back pay they say they are owed for standing in security lines for up to 25 minutes after clocking out of their work shifts, which were as long as 12 hours. The original suit, by Jesse Busk, was first filed in December 2010; since then, Bloomberg reports, a dozen similar suits have been filed involving Amazon, and more against other retailers. Should the Supreme Court side with Busk, “his case will be allowed to move forward in a federal trial court. Ultimately, Amazon and various staffing agencies it uses could be required to pay as many as 400,000 workers back wages amounting to $100 million or more, according to plaintiffs’ attorneys involved in the case.” If Amazon wins, however, “employers could feel emboldened to squeeze more time out of workers without pay.”
Here’s my original post on this big case.
It’s really a simple case, isn’t it? Workers want to be paid for the time their employer makes them spend on the job. But this awful court…I dread all their decisions.
UPDATE 10/8/2014. And here’s Adam Liptak, New York Times, reporting on today’s hearing in this case. If you read it, you’ll develop a deeper distaste for Scalia’s half-assed, inhuman arguments. Supreme Court Weighs Employee Pay for Amazon’s After-Work Security Screening – NYTimes.com.