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Comment by skunkworker | Hacker News Reader

Will this also apply to the California Supreme Court ruling that Amazon won back in 2013?

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/business/supreme-court-ru...

That was a U.S. Supreme Court ruling and not a California Supreme Court ruling. The plantiffs in that case were not all workers in CA and the case was based around the federal portal to portal law. This decision is based upon California state law and involves only employees in California for which state law would apply.

State law vs federal law. Amazon case was a matter of federal law so it would not govern here.

Judging by this quote, there’s a good chance SCOTUS overturns a ruling on this topic by the 9th circuit a second time.

> Justice Thomas disagreed, saying the appeals court had “erred by focusing on whether an employer required a particular activity.” The right test, he said, was whether the activity “is tied to the productive work that the employee is employed to perform.”

Maybe the 9th will overturn en blanc before it reaches SCOTUS.

That’s a very silly viewpoint. If I have to travel to the North Pole to change a lightbulb, should I only get paid for changing the lightbulb? If the security screening takes 9h, would we really expect employees not to be paid? If so, these would be pretty terrible job arrangements.

If you are the facility manager for a location in the north pole, you wouldn't get paid for travel time to your place of employment.

Bear in mind this is a devil's advocate argument - I think they likely should be paid.

But there are plenty of places where pay is weird - airline flight attendants for example are paid door close to door open - boarding, offloading, waiting in the airport security lines, waiting at the airport for delayed flights, are all mostly unpaid.

The thinking being is that their substantially higher per hour pay makes up for it and it - and I'm sure Apple will make a similar argument.

I would bet airport workers - or the people working the dunkin donuts in the food court - aren't paid for the time it takes to get through TSA either.

> If you are the facility manager for a location in the north pole, you wouldn't get paid for travel time to your place of employment.

That's because you can control where you live, and thus, control how long it takes you to travel to your place of employment.

As an employee, you can't control how long the security screenings take, or what other 'non-productive' bullshit your job expects you to do.

> That's because you can control where you live, and thus, control how long it takes you to travel to your place of employment.

even this isn't exactly clear-cut. lots of people that work in expensive areas can't afford to live within a 20-30 minute commute distance.

Flight attendants aren't paid all that much. At the majors it seems to be around $25-30/hr. (And presumably less on the regional jets).

So uh, for the most part, $50-$60k/year is a middle class income, and depending on where you live, can be upper middle class (in the US, in USD; in Canada the numbers are lower in CAD).

For the vast majority of workers in North America, $25-$30/ hour is well paid. Many people buy houses and raise families in households with one middle class income and one lower income.

It’s a terrible income considering how much time you have to devote to it, starting when you leave the house. $50-$60k when you come home everyday at a set schedule and get to see your kids and have dinner with the family is different than $50k-$60k where you spend almost all the time traveling and getting an extra dose of solar radiation.

I’m sure it’s a great job for single and younger people who might want those trade offs, but it sucks overall.

Assuming they're paid for 40 hours a week. The parent was pointing out that flight attendants spend a lot of time hanging around airports that they're not usually compensated for.

I'm not arguing it's a bad job. Historically, it was seen as a somewhat exotic see-the-world job for young people. (And at least the Asian carriers sort of enforced that.)

(1) you're assuming a 40hr work week (2) median household income in the USA is about $56k.

> $50-$60k/year is a middle class income,

It's perhaps a middle income income, but its not an income that is typical of the middle class (petit bourgeoisie).

this is needless hairsplitting. I doubt you can find two people who agree on exactly what "middle class" means. some people use class as a direct proxy for income. for others class might be tied to the way you make money (hourly wage, salary, or returns from capital), level of education, and/or "lifestyle".

the wikipedia page for "petit bourgeoisie" lists the following as examples:

* Successful small business owners.

* Middle managers in the service sector (middle management).

* Lawyers working in small partnerships.

* Private GP practices.

depending how successful "successful" is here, the first and second examples could be people making $50-60k in a low-mid COL area. I don't think most people would consider a lawyer to be middle class (maybe upper-middle), and I definitely don't think they would consider a doctor with their own practice to be middle class.

You get a lot of perks though - free meals, free flights, free hotel stays, etc. It might be an extra $25k yearly for the perks of being a drink server/babysitter at FL300

You get those perks, but you’re also not seeing your family.

I know 3 flight attendants and they are quintessential perennial bachelor(ettes). Two of them fly SF-NY all the time and have friend groups in both cities.

I think they should get paid for this time too.

But... I think that the general idea that the court system upholds is that the employee is free to get a different job if they don't like the unpaid portion of their work. And if it is hard to get new employees to agree to unpaid work, then the employer will either start paying or they will increase the wages to make up for it.

Maybe so, but it encourages employers to find ways to circumvent minimum wage laws. An sufficiently creative employer could find ways to have employees on-site for 8 hours per day, but only classify 4 of those 8 hours as paid work and find excuses why the remaining 4 hours are off the clock. E.g. setting things up, putting tools away, doing paperwork, etc.

Furthermore, this would open the door to Apple making any time consuming and unreasonable demands. This ia rife for abuse.

They would be pretty terrible job arrangements. Although I'd point out that a non-trivial number of people have 3 or 4 hours of commuting a day. Now, you can argue that this is optional and perhaps it is to some degree. Nonetheless a lot of people spend work-related time that's not on the clock.

It's based on the wording of a 1947 law, maybe it's time to change that law. I can see the need for clarity here though. Should employers pay their workers for time spent commuting to a job site/office? Can I live three hours away and make a cool 6 hours of extra wages listening to audio books on my way to/from work?

Well, maybe, maybe not, but once you're on the job site, you're entitled to be paid for whatever the employer decides to do with you, like security screenings.

For commuting to their regular workplace? No. If an employee chooses to live three hours away from the office, that's their problem.

What if an employer chooses to be located three hours away from the nearest affordable housing?

Then don't take the job.

Yes they should be expected to pay for that, it's your time that you can't use for whatever you want because now you have to spend it getting to work. I think it would have to be limited to something reasonable, but yes, unequivocally your employer should be on the hook for that. I believe I should be paid for the imposition on my time.

I also think that forcing hourly people to take a 30 minute unpaid lunch needs to be fixed, I absolutely hated the one job I've had where this was enforced. I would have much rather just worked a straight 8 hours so I wasn't robbed of 30 minutes of my life every day.

Both of these are hard to fix and I don't know how to implement it, but they definitely should be.

Why do you think that one-sentence quote from the dissent makes it likely the SCOTUS would overrule this? I mean, what makes you think a Supreme Court majority would agree that that is the correct test?

You are completely correct! I misread the start of the sentence. Too late to fix it now.

Maybe the right test hasn't been applied yet. If one is at work say at a burger place, and were working as a cashier, then need to go back to do food prep and need to wash your hands, are you suddenly off the clock while washing your hands? Are you working the whole time? If you travel to your work, and get in line at work to get security screened or wash your hands why would it be different in the middle than at the start of the day?

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