Workers at Amazon Warehouses Won't Get Paid for Waiting in Security Lines

Companies that make their workers go through security screenings before they can go home don’t have to pay them for the time they spend waiting in line to be checked, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday morning. All nine justices sided with an Amazon.com contractor, Integrity Staffing Solutions, on the grounds that a lawsuit by warehouse workers should have been dismissed.

The question driving the original case, as I explained in Bloomberg Businessweek in October, is what counts as work. In 1938, Congress required that companies pay their workers for time they spend on the job. In 1947, following a flood of lawsuits, Congress passed a new law clarifying that this didn’t include “preliminary” or “postliminary” activities such as commuting. Courts, companies, and employees have been wrestling ever since over where exactly that line should be drawn.