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Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

Good.

If the company makes you do something, it’s work.

I only wish this would carry to non-California locations and to the service industry in general - when I worked as a waiter in a Rocky Mountain West state, after ending a shift we were not allowed to leave the premises until rolling exactly 100 sets of silverware. If no silverware was available, we would also have to run them through the dishwasher 2-3 times. We additionally had to perform two other "closing" tasks (e.g. restocking a particular mini-fridge, wiping down floor). This is pretty standard in the restaurant industry - the only problem is that in this state, servers are paid $2.15/hour, with the assumption that they'll make the rest up to minimum wage by serving tables.

Anyway, some nights it would take me 1.5-2 hours to leave (not atypical), and I would get a whopping $4 of pay for that time.

Depending on state servers are supposed to be paid non-tipped rate for not tipped parts of work including training and meetings. Of course good luck getting that without being at willed for "unrelated" reasons.

I forget the details or where this applies but someone before on here has mentioned that restaurants are allowed to use a certain percentage of tipped workers time on non-tipable duties like those types of tasks. The usual caveat of minimum wage after tips would still apply.

It's perfectly legal to require servers (making the server minimum wage) to do up to 1/4 of the shift doing things other than serving guests.

That sounds more like an issue with the tips system. It's one fo the worst things about visiting the USA, combined with taxes not being in the price that is.

In Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk [1], the US Supreme Court held that time spent by warehouse workers waiting to undergo and undergoing security screenings is not compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act, as amended by the Portal-to-Portal Act.

[1] https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/integrity-staffi...

Here it was California law being interpreted by the California Supreme Court as requested by the U.S. 9th circuit Court of Appeals.

It becomes a little more tricky when it is optional, as in this case. The only thing that gets searched is a bag if you choose to bring it to work.

The simple solution for ape is to ban bags at work so nobody gets searched.

From the article:

>Apple said it could prohibit employees from bringing any bags or personal Apple devices into its stores altogether but gave them that benefit. The California Supreme Court said a ban on any personal items would be “draconian.”

And simply not hire anybody who needs medication or pre-menopausal women?

Issue a clear company branded bag. This is actually a somewhat common practice in certain US schools for safety reasons.

Continuing the dystopian theme, I see.

The simple solution would be to have a locker room where people can leave their stuff they need, but don't want/can't bring into the shop.

But that will only be the second cheapest solution as long as the problem can be made the employees' problem without paying them for it. This ruling won't make employers pay for absurd waiting times, it will give them that tiny nudge that second apparently need to find better solutions.

It's a bit more transparent, but won't make much of a difference to the bottom line in the long run:

The actual work done won't change from the relabeling, and Apple can adjust the hourly wages to get roughly to the same level of total compensation as before. (Modulo boundary effects from America's love affair with minimum wage laws, should they kick in.)

I doubt they’ll adjust the wages, if only because of the bad PR that would result.

They can also hire less, and let inflation do its thing over time.

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