In California now have to pay for overtime

The California Supreme Court ruled that employers must pay employees money for the time they spend completing tasks during off hours, for example, lingering after the end of the official working day.

Фото: Depositphotos

The decision made this week marks the victory of labor advocates, who believe that requiring hourly workers to spend unpaid minutes means stealing their wages. Business groups claim that the new decision will lead to a surge in the mass of lawsuits and will cost companies a pretty penny, writes CNN.

A federal law, called the “Fair Labor Standards Act,” usually allows companies to not pay compensation to employees for the time spent on duties that the law describes as trivial or too difficult to track.

According to the majority, the California Supreme Court stated that the federal rule does not apply in the state when it comes to some ongoing tasks performed by employees during off-hours.

This is the result of a six-year legal battle between Starbucks and California employee Douglas Trester, who sued the company for not paying for completing the tasks that, he said, took from 4 to 10 additional minutes after the shift ended each day.

According to court documents, for 17 the months of the Trester’s work at Starbucks, the unpaid time was over 100 dollars. Shaun Setareh, one of the plaintiff’s attorneys, said it was “theft of wages” and “a refusal to pay people in the interests of feeding up the wallets of executives and shareholders of large corporations.”

Фото: Depositphotos

Sethareh said that the new decision "will change the course of the game, which will have consequences for every employee in the state." Starbucks made a statement in which it stated that it was “disappointed” with the decision and sent the case back to the US 9 District Court of Appeal.

The US Chamber of Commerce, the largest business lobby group in the country, was on the side of Starbucks in the fight against this matter. The organization said in a brief filed with the California Supreme Court that employers in the state are "already vulnerable to legal costs due to unreasonable claims for wages and labor hours."

“The court should not exacerbate this vulnerability by endorsing the applicant's rigid and unviable position,” the brief said. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry did not respond to requests for comment on the decision.

Most opinions of the highest authority in California suggest that federal law is outdated, and smartphones or other modern devices can be used to easily track employee’s work hours up to a minute, which, in turn, may well add up to hours.

“We leave open the question of whether there may be wage claims arising from employee activities that are so intermittent or short-lived that it would be unreasonable to require employers to compensate them for the time spent doing so,” the majority said.

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