The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the time employees at a call center spent booting up their computers was compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The court found that the use of computers was indispensable to the employees performing their job duties, and therefore the computer startup time was compensable. The decision marks the second time a federal court of appeals has found such time to be compensable under federal law.
Background: Under the Portal-to-Portal Act, which amended the Fair Labor Standards Act, employers must compensate employees for the “continuous workday” – any activities between the start and completion of the employee’s principal duties or activities. Such principal activities are generally defined as any work or activity that is indispensable to the performance of the employee’s job duties. Accordingly, employers are generally required to compensate employees for time spent at the beginning and end of a shift putting on required safety clothing, for example, but are generally not obligated to compensate employees for the time it takes to commute to work.
In Cadena v. Customer Connexx LLC, employees at a call center used computers to perform their job duties and clocked in via an electronic timekeeping system accessed only after powering up the computer and logging in and before shutting it down. According to employee testimony, powering up and logging into the computers could take anywhere from a few seconds to twenty minutes.
More to come? The Ninth Circuit’s decision follows a similar decision rendered by the Tenth Circuit last year in Peterson v. Nelnet Diversified Solutions, making it the second court of appeals to find that the time it takes for a computer to start up is compensable. The Ninth Circuit has previously sided with employees on compensable time issues, holding that time spent in post-shift security screenings was compensable for Apple employees in a case decided in 2020.
Outlook: With the advent of remote and hybrid work arrangements, compensable time issues may continue to percolate in the courts, particularly as such arrangements present unique “continuous workday” scenarios. Notably, the Department of Labor filed an amicus brief in the above case, perhaps indicating the current administration sees the issue as one of its top priorities. Employers should keep a close eye on future compensable time cases, and in particular on ones that implicate remote work issues.