I missed it when it first came out, but the United States Supreme Court decided an important employment law case this week,
Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Brusk. Full disclosure: I haven’t read this case, and I’m not planning to. From
the write-up in The Daily Kos, I don’t have the stomach to read it. Integrity Staffing Solutions is/was a contractor for Amazon.com. They had an employment policy to make employees stand in line off the clock for security screening before and after each shift. Sometimes it was a half hour each way. The issue was whether the company had to pay the employees for that time. Guess what the Supremes said? Yep, the employees don’t have to get paid for this time. Now, I was taught in the context of the Fair Labor Standards Act, that if you are an hourly employee, any time that is not your own needs to be compensated. Well, apparently that was the rule before corporations destroyed the last checks on their power. The incredible thing is this was not the typical 5-4 crazy ruling. This was a 9-0 ruling written by jurist supreme, Clarence Thomas. If I worked for “Integrity” the first thing I would do after this ruling is march right to the closest AFL-CIO office and ask how I can form a union. If you are reading this,
here’s a link to save you the trip.