Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk, United States Supreme Court, No. 13-433, December 9, 2014

Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk, United States Supreme Court, No. 13–433, December 9, 2014

Decision: An employer was not liable to compensate employees for time spent waiting to undergo (and undergoing) security screenings at the end of a shift.

An employer hired hourly warehouse workers to retrieve products from warehouse shelves and package them for delivery to customers. These employees were required to undergo a security screening before leaving the warehouse each day. Several former employees sued the company for compensation under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), claiming that the roughly 25 minutes each day that they spent waiting to undergo and undergoing those screenings should have been paid. They argued that the screenings were conducted to prevent employee theft and, thus, were conducted for the sole benefit of the employer and its customers. These former employees also alleged that the company could have reduced that time by adding screeners or staggering shift terminations.

The District Court dismissed the claim, holding that the screenings were not integral and indispensable to the employees' principal activities. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, asserting that post-shift activities were compensable. The employer appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court held that the time that spent waiting to undergo and undergoing security screenings was not compensable under the FLSA.

Employers are not obligated to pay for “activities which are preliminary to or postliminary to” the performance of the principal activities. The term “principal activities” includes all activities which are an “integral and indispensable part of the principal activities.” An activity is “integral and indispensable” if it is an intrinsic element of the employee's principal activities and one with which the employee cannot dispense if he is to perform his principal activities.

The Supreme Court found that the security screenings were noncompensable postliminary activities. The screenings were not the principal activities the employees were hired to perform (they were hired to retrieve products from warehouse shelves and package them for shipment). The screenings were not “integral and indispensable” to those activities.

Finally, the Supreme Court addressed the claim that the screenings were compensable because the employer could have reduced the time, noting that this matter should be presented at the bargaining table, not to a court in an FLSA claim.