Companies Sued For Not Paying For Time Spent Booting Up A Computer

from the labor-law-fun dept

Gizmodo points us to the fascinating news that there is a growing number of lawsuits from hourly employees suing employers for not paying them for the time they sit waiting for their computers to boot up in the morning. The article also mentions time waiting for a computer to shut down, but I'm not sure how that should matter. Once you start that process, can't you just leave? I can certainly sympathize that the bootup process can take quite some time -- especially on older Windows machines, but this hardly seems like lawsuit material. As some have pointed out, for many of these employees, they're unlikely to be doing work while the machine is booting up in the first place. The lawyers filing these lawsuits claim that many workers do get started before the computer boots up, but if the employees really are upset about this issue, why not just decide to not start working until the computer has booted up. Problem solved.

Filed Under: booting up, hourly workers, lawsuits

If You Carry A Blackberry And Are Paid Hourly, Do You Count Checking Your Email As Time Working?

from the does-checking-your-Blackberry-count-as-work dept

We've talked about the question of the work-life balance plenty of times, as people begin to recognize that "life" (such as personal surfing) is showing up in the office and "work" (such as checking your email) is showing up at home. However, that's leading to a few problems with some legacy systems. For example, what does it mean for workers who are paid on an hourly basis, with the potential for overtime? That problem recently came up when ABC News tried to make it clear to new staff writers that they couldn't count time checking their Blackberries as being work hours for overtime purposes. While the two sides settled this issue internally, it does raise plenty of questions for other hourly workers who are still expected to "check-in" from time to time outside of the office. This might not be a huge problem, as many jobs that require a Blackberry tend not to be paid hourly -- but these types of issues are likely to keep showing up as workplaces struggle to deal with changing work and lifestyles.

Filed Under: blackberries, checking email, email, hourly workers, overtime
Companies: abc