In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court rejected a case involving Amazon warehouse employees who had argued they should be compensated for the time they spend waiting in a line for security screenings. The workers had argued that the wait should be considered part of their work in the warehouse.
According to the New York Times, the Supreme Court denied their theory because “the screenings were not ‘integral and indispensable’ to the workers’ jobs, which involved retrieving products from warehouse shelves and packaging them for delivery to Amazon’s customers. That meant, Justice Thomas said, that no extra pay was required.”
In issuing their ruling, the justices relied on a 1947 law, the Portal-to-Portal Act which stated that companies do not have to pay workers for preliminary or postliminary activities. The Times also reported, “The Supreme Court interpreted the law in 1956 in Steiner v. Mitchell to require pay only for tasks that are an ‘integral and indispensable part of the principal activities for which covered workmen are employed.’”