Supreme Court To Hear Important Amazon Wage Theft Case

An important case regarding unpaid time that workers spend going in and out of security while going to jobs at Amazon warehouses has been picked up by the U.S. Supreme Court. The case was last heard in the Ninth Circuit where the justices came down on the side of employees, whether the U.S. Supreme Court decides similarly remains to be seen.

The case touches on the idea known as “wage theft” which refers to the practice of employers stealing workers’ time and money without fair compensation. In this case, hundreds of workers have filed suit against Amazon claiming that every day they were forced to go through security screenings to enter and leave the warehouses.

The problem with the screenings is that they were very detailed and could collectively add 25 minutes to a workers’ day. Though the screenings were a mandatory part of working at Amazon, the company refused to compensate workers for the time spent going through security.

Labor law experts say the case is important not only because of the 500+ workers who have joined together to sue Amazon, but because the trend of forcing workers to spend a portion of their day going through security is becoming more and more common. Security screening is being adopted by a wide array of industries and it is crucial that employers and employees get clarification over whether the time spent on such measures deserves compensation.

In fact, given how pro-employee the Ninth Circuit opinion was, many believe that if the Supreme Court echoes the ruling it is possible it could lead to massive liability for employers across the country. Already the verdict in the Amazon case has triggered dozens of other class-action lawsuits against employers for unpaid time spent going through security measures.

If the current case should prove successful it could be a massive success for hundreds of thousands of workers. According to some estimates, the settlement could involve back pay for up to 500,000 current and former workers at Amazon’s massive U.S. distribution warehouses.

While the Ninth Circuit case was seen as very friendly to workers, there is concern that a verdict out of the Supreme Court won’t be nearly as helpful. That’s because the Ninth Circuit has long had a reputation as being relatively liberal, while the Supreme Court has a decidedly conservative reputation. Not only has the Court tended to be conservative, but it has routinely issued pro-business decisions, something that worries some labor lawyers given their decision to take up the Amazon case.

Source: “This week in the War on Workers: Huge Amazon wage theft case goes to Supreme Court,” by Laura Clawson, published at DailyKos.com on March 15, 2014.

Source: “Huge Amazon Wage Theft Case Goes to Supreme Court,” published at EditorsGuild.com on March 16, 2014.

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