When you’re part of the bloggerati, just one half-step below the illuminati, well, let’s just say membership has its privileges. AMEX taupe card, rinkside seats to the local roller derby, earlybird specials, the world is your oyster.
And, at work, the staff sees me coming and runs the other way throngs to my office. Indeed, it’s gotten so bad, that we had to install security machines to control ingress and egress. While my firm can’t wait for me to jump ship loves the attention that my blog brings — remember you can vote for my blog in the ABA Blawg 100 — the folks who sign my mega-paycheck expressed concern that it would also have to compensate our non-exempt employees for the spent clearing security.
Thankfully, yesterday, the Supreme Court, in this opinion, unanimously ruled that the time these folks spend clearing security is not compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act. That’s because the time our staff spends waiting in line to clear security is neither indispensable nor integral to their principal activities in the office. They get paid to do legal work; not wait in line. And, absent the security, these folks could still do their jobs. And, even though my firm requires our awesome staff to clear security because of my blogging greatness and related fame and notoriety, the Portal-to-Portal Act exempts employers from FLSA liability for this this preliminary and postliminary time.
Although in reality, our firm had no direct stake in yesterday’s SCOTUS ruling, and I made up everything in this post, except for the SCOTUS opinion, hopefully, you’ve learned a thing or two about the FLSA and compensable time.