On December 9, 2014, the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk holding that employees' time spent waiting to undergo and undergoing security screenings is not compensable under the FLSA.
Action Item: Employers should evaluate whether the preliminary and postliminary activities they require of their employees are "integral and indispensable to the principal activities" of the employees' job duties, meaning whether such activities are intrinsic elements of the employees' principal activities. This analysis will dictate whether employers must compensate employees under the FLSA for time spent completing these activities.
In Integrity Staffing Solutions, the employer employed warehouse workers to gather packages from warehouse shelves for Amazon.com. The employer required its employees to participate in security screenings before leaving work each day. Former employees sued the employer under the FLSA claiming that they should be compensated for the time spent during the security screenings. The employees also alleged that the employer could have reduced the amount of time spent on these screenings and that the screenings only benefitted the employer.
The Supreme Court held that the security screenings were not compensable under the FSLA. In arriving at this decision, the Court held that a preliminary or postliminary activity must be integral and indispensable to an employee's principal activities to be compensable. Defining this standard, the Court stated that "an activity is not integral and indispensable to an employee's principal activities unless it is an intrinsic element of those activities and one with which the employee cannot dispense if he is to perform those activities." The Court explained that "[t]he integral and indispensable test is tied to the productive work that the employee is employed to perform," not "whether an employer required a particular activity."
The takeaways from this case for employers are that (1) the FLSA does not require employers to pay employees for time spent in security screenings, and (2) employers should review other preliminary and postliminary activities to ascertain whether such other activities are compensable in light of this decision.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
