> In the Starbucks case, Mr. Amaya said that the court found the chain “just relied on the idea that a few minutes doesn’t mean anything, and the Court said that sort of attitude won’t fly in California.”
The decision's not too surprising, then. "No big deal" carries zero persuasive value: it only works as a supposed argument when the person hearing it already agrees.
While Starbucks had no problem stealing 4-10 minutes a day from the plaintiff for regularly scheduled closing tasks as a matter of policy, I somehow doubt they would've scoffed and hand-waved away him clocking in every day 10 minutes before he actually arrived.
The disparity is important to point out. Companies -- many, speaking in general -- will go through contortions and "chain of command anger transmission" over any overtime, and efforts to avoid same.
Likewise, efforts to keep employees below the number of clocked hours that would qualify them for benefits. (Some places, this is or used to be 30 hours / week.)
On the other side of the coin, though, many employees have to buffer their time to make sure they don't clock in a second late. (And, once you're there ahead of shift, often you will be asked or expected to "help out" with something, on an "impromptu basis". This also uses personal loyalty to effect unclocked work; your co-workers may be your friends, and how can you say no to them when they could use the help? When actually, if the place is short-handed prior to your shift start, this is a workforce and scheduling problem on the part of the employer.)
And, for example, employees have to struggle between providing the expected level of customer support and patience, with lingering or last-minute customers -- which takes away from overlapping scheduled closing preparations -- while not (officially, at least) going over the mandated hours limit completing the delayed closing.
Businesses try to squeeze out every second of possible idle time, while shoving the responsibility and expense for any variations that cause overages, onto the employees.
In the "salaried" pay domain, in the U.S., many employees are required to be present 40 hours / week, even when things are slack. If they perform better and get their workload done early, they are required to stick around like an hourly employee (and may get more impromptu work assigned, as a "reward").
But, when demand is higher or a crunch hits, they are expected to stay as much longer as it takes -- for no additional pay.
The benefits of a salaried position's fixed pay rate, accumulate mostly to the employer. Any actual schedule flexibility for the employee, devolves to their manager and HR. Who may try to be "fair" (and, as I've seen, often more senior management and HR policy hamstring immediate managers in doing this) or who may play favorites -- or just try to make themselves look better with the appearance of a "dedicated", "hard-driving" staff -- that they've "obviously motivated".
In the U.S., we have a lot of overall wealth. We could make a lot of lives better, spending a bit of it on more appropriate staffing. But we don't.
And, no one will act in a way that makes them "less competitive" (e.g. "higher costs"), unless there's a common requirement -- a level playing field -- one that has effective teeth.
THAT'S what 40 hours, and laws and regulations about overages, are meant to be. Compete -- that's fine. Just, you can't -- none of you -- step over this line, where we define employee abuse as starting.
And why do we have government enforcement? (And unions, etc.) Because it's awfully hard for an individual employee to fight a business, with its much more substantial resources and influence.
(Also, there is already tremendous complaint about lawsuits and torts and... Does anyone really want more of that? Arguably, many businesses would rather have common standards defined and enforced. Less legal hassle -- and, if everyone has to abide by them, still a level playing field on which to compete.)
AND NOW, add a world economy to the mix, with vastly differing standards.
What does that do to your domestic labor marketplace? (This is a rhetorical question.)
Back to this case and the U.S. I'm glad circumstances like these are getting called out and addressed. People need to think more about these matters, not less.
The short excerpt you can read for free says this is more about stuff like the two minutes between clocking out at closing time and locking the door on your way out. It might be wage theft in some sense but isn’t the same thing as requiring hours of unpaid overtime. On the other hand, I suspect the part of the article you can’t read for free is about an employer who tried to cover a substantial amount of work under this exemption and now the court has to ruin things for everybody to prevent abuses.
My own experience closing down stores of different types, though, is that that time varies. Most of these places won't let you clock in just a tad early: One place required you be perfectly on time, many others had a 3-minute window before your scheduled time.
Now, if locking the door and leaving took a minute each time (much like employees leaving without locking up), it might not be an issue. But lots of things happen. Sometimes you have to wait for folks to use the toilet: Other times, there are issues with the alarm and you wind up having to call the alarm folks. Sometimes it just takes longer to leave: One fast food place I worked at required folks gather in one vestibule. 2 workers went to their cars, one stopping outside the door and the other stopping at the exit.
This was a security measure in case of a robbery. You were encouraged to clock out once your work was done, though, and wait around for the others and management to get finished as well. You were violating safety standards if you just left.
This was all unpaid time. Even at 5 minutes each day, it adds up. Sure, it ism't the same as requiring hours of unpaid overtime, but that's only due to severity of wage theft. It is like having a lesser punishment for stealing $5 compared to $100.
In theory, this decision makes sense. If you're having employees track the time that they work, it's weird to ask them to clock out before doing a little bit of end-of-day work.
In practice, since Starbucks pays above minimum wage, I suspect they might just lower hourly wages by 1-2% if the average worker now clocks in for 1-2% more hours.
Agree, but you can probably "hide" it so that it's subtle. E.g. you give people slightly smaller raises, or don't increase initial salaries for new employees over time as quickly as you might have. I'm not making a value judgment on whether this would be okay, but I think Starbucks could do something like that without the world noticing.
>If you're having employees track the time that they work, it's weird to ask them to clock out before doing a little bit of end-of-day work.
"weird" isn't the word I'd use. There needs to be a word for fraud that nets the fraudster not very much money because they are defrauding someone who already has very little.
To me, that seems especially economically destructive, as you are transferring money from someone with little (who therefore places a high marginal value on dollars) to an entity that has much (and therefore has a lower marginal value on dollars.) - I mean, on top of the usual distortion and value loss caused by fraud.
I manage a group of hourly workers. On occasion, one or two of them would stay a bit late to finish some work and not count it in their hours because they didn’t want to clock overtime.
Another worker would sometimes leave early or come in late, but write the straight 9-6, because “the other place I worked was okay with it.”
I put a stop to both immediately. The first is exploitative, the second is time theft, and neither are good for the company.
I am grateful that the state of California is strict labor laws. They are a pain in the ass as a manager, but they give me the tools I need to make sure the people who work for me aren’t being exploited.
What confuses me is why Starbucks would fight this fight at all... A huge part of their brand is employee support, with free online college tuition, a strong culture of internal advancement, etc. These fringe activities are very small and represent a rounding error on salary & wages for the employees concerned. This could have been remedied with a quick apology to the plaintiff and a change in policy. Why would they drag this out on appeal after appeal?
It must not be a rounding error then. Here in Korea, I see the Starbucks employees sticking around well before opening and closing times doing all sorts of preparations and cleaning. I always wondered whether it was considered part of their shift.
The decision's not too surprising, then. "No big deal" carries zero persuasive value: it only works as a supposed argument when the person hearing it already agrees.
While Starbucks had no problem stealing 4-10 minutes a day from the plaintiff for regularly scheduled closing tasks as a matter of policy, I somehow doubt they would've scoffed and hand-waved away him clocking in every day 10 minutes before he actually arrived.