Two former employees sued the hiring company, Integrity Staffing Solutions, alleging that they had to spend roughly 25 minutes a day undergoing those screenings and that they were not paid for that time.
It was required that all warehouse workers go through the screening to make sure they weren’t stealing anything from the warehouse. They were had to remove wallets, keys and belts as they passed through metal detectors.
The routine is not uncommon at other big name companies, including Apple.
While the workers argued that they should be paid for that time because the screening was required, the Supreme Court disagreed unanimously overturning a previous decision made by the federal appeals court.
The court found that they don’t have to be paid because under federal law, workers do not have to be compensated for time spent performing an activity that they were not hired to do.
The screenings are not an activity that the workers were actually hired to perform, wrote Justice Clarence Thomas. The employees were hired to retrieve products from warehouse shelves and package those products for shipment to Amazon customers, not to go through security screenings.
