Punch clock

Early on in my work life, I had plenty of jobs where I got paid by the hour. Some were office temp jobs, where I kept my hours on a form signed each work week by the supervisor and submitted for payment. Others - jobs in retail, restaurants, and once in a factory - were punch clock jobs. You punch in, punched out for lunch, punched back in after lunch, punched out at end of day. 

You couldn't just punch in and say you were working and then go sit on your duff somewhere. Someone looked at those punch in times to make sure they were in sync with your actual shift. And at the end of the day, there were supervisors making sure that no one was hanging out by the punch clock waiting for quitting hour so they could punch out. 

But, basically, if you were on the clock, you were paid for it.

Fortunately, most of my professional life was, well, professional. No punching in. No punching out. No such thing as overtime, but plenty of informal give and take around things like doctor's appointments. (I will say that, in my professional career, I never worked anything close to a 40 hour week, which was, of course, true for most of my colleagues. A professional week was at least 50-ish hours.)

My professional career was in the technology sector, so each day involved some booting up, logging in, logging out, starting apps (once there were apps to start), etc. I never considered this booting, logging, starting anything other than part of my work. Getting my cup of tea wasn't work. Chatting with a colleague wasn't either (unless it was work-related and not idle chatter or gossip). Nor was taking a bio break. But anything associated with the tasks at hand: THAT WAS WORK.

But at an American Airlines call center, workers on the clock were expected "to boot up their computers and be signed in and ready to start taking calls before their paid work day officially started."

Supervisors instructed employees at the Tempe call center to start this process 15 minutes before they would officially start to be paid, and if they managed to log in within that time frame, they would be required to start taking calls straight away. (Source: PaddleYourOwnKanoo)

But call center employees think there's something not quite right about this process, and they're bringing a class action suit against American.

There's apparently quite a bit of case law on the question of whether "employers can ask workers to boot up computers and sign into various IT systems before they start getting paid." Much of the case law pertains to call center employees. 

The results are mixed. A 2021 ruling by the 10th Circuit Appeals court supported employees, finding that booting and logging are work tasks and should, thus, be compensated for. 

Other courts have suggested that 10 minutes or more of pre-work system setup is the point at which employees should be paid for these activities.

Ten minutes or more? Seriously? So if it's only 9 1/2 minutes, you're not entitle do get paid. F that! If you work five days a week, that would be 47.5 minutes of unpaid work. Yikes! 

I hope that the workers prevail. 

Skylar Hartwig, the customer service rep leading the charge, kept a record of unpaid work time over a period of a couple of months. When he presented his self-kept "time card" to his management, American said it would pay him for the times that were recorded. But not for the years prior before Hartwig started keeping track. (It's not clear from the article whether that recorded time included the booting and app-starting, or just the time Hartwig was actually taking calls before his shift officially started.) 

So it does look like American recognizes that at least the period of time when the customer service representatives are representing should be compensated.

But I hope they have to go the whole way and pay for the start up time.

No one's logging on for fun or pleasure.

Work is work, and you really ought to get paid for it.