The recent Supreme
Court decision that said A__z_n did not need to compensate workers for time
spent in security check lines at the end of their shifts sounded strange to me.
The employer's argument was (1) that the wait is rarely as long as 30 minutes, usually
only a couple of minutes, and (2) if workers had to be compensated, it
would cost this employer and others across the country millions of
dollars. Huh? Wait a minute! Which is it?
If compensating workers for time spent in line would be that costly, the workers must be
spending a lot of time in those lines. Or, if the wait is really so short, how
could compensation be such a costly burden to the employer?
Wouldn't you think that counting time spent in security check lines as work time would motivate the employer to keep
the wait short, even when, as was the case in the original lawsuit, the
employer outsourced the security check to another company?
The application of
“portal to portal” in this case sounds fishy, too. The employees obviously have
not yet left their workplace, because it is precisely the purpose of the
security check to sniff out attempted thefts before workers leave. And if they were not
still at work, how could the employer demand that they submit to a security
check?
