Must employees be paid for time spent on employer premises in their personal vehicles while waiting to scan an identification badge, with guards then peering into their vehicles before the employees exit through a security gate?
In Huerta v. CSI Electrical Contractors, that was one of three questions from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that the California Supreme Court recently answered concerning the meaning of compensable “hours worked” under California law.
George Huerta filed suit, on behalf of himself and other employees, against CSI Electrical Contractors (CSI), for whom the employees performed work at a solar power facility. At the end of each workday, the workers waited in a long line in their personal vehicles outside a security gate, where guards scanned each worker’s badge and sometimes peered into their vehicles and truck beds, searching for stolen tools or endangered species located near the worksite. This exit procedure could delay the workers’ departure for five to 30 minutes or more, time for which the workers claimed they should have been paid.
California’s high court unanimously agreed.
Definition of “hours worked” for which employees must be paid
Industry- and occupation-wide orders issued by the California Industrial Wage Commission set minimum requirements for wages, hours and working conditions. The orders define “hours worked” as “the time during which an employee is subject to the control of an employer and includes all the time the employee is suffered or permitted to work, whether or not required to do so.”
The California Supreme Court previously has held that the two clauses in the definition of “hours worked” establish independent bases for compensating time on the job. Quoting those previous rulings, the court explained in Huerta: “Thus, an employee who is subject to the control of an employer does not have to be working during that time to be compensated under the applicable wage order. Likewise, an employee who is suffered or permitted to work does not have to be under the employer’s control to be compensated, provided the employer has or should have knowledge of the employee’s work.”
Time spent completing an employer-mandated exit process is compensable work time
The California Supreme Court ruled that CSI employees were entitled to be paid for the time spent on the employer’s premises in their personal vehicles, waiting and undergoing an exit process that includes a vehicle inspection delaying their departure. The court concluded that, like Apple employees the court ruled in 2020 were entitled to be paid for undergoing mandatory bag checks when leaving work, Huerta and his co-workers were entitled to be paid for waiting for and undergoing CSI’s mandatory exit process, even though they were in their personal vehicles.
That’s because the employees were under CSI’s control throughout the exit process. They remained confined to CSI premises. They performed mandated tasks as part of the process, including driving their vehicles to the security gate, waiting in their vehicles for their turn to undergo the security check, rolling down their windows to present their identification badges to the guard, and then submitting their vehicles to visual inspection and possible physical search. And the exit process primarily served CSI’s interests, including preventing the theft of tools.
The court acknowledged that CSI’s exit protocol took less time than the bag searches for which the court held Apple had to pay its exiting employees. But CSI’s exit process involved more than the employees simply scanning their badges to facilitate entering and exiting the worksite. That security guards were employed to conduct the inspections and “that the procedure itself could take up to a minute or more per vehicle suggests that CSI’s inspections extended beyond the time necessary to simply scan a badge.”
Exit lesson
An employer that requires, for the employer’s own benefit, its employees to undergo an exit security procedure that delays the employees’ departure from the worksite must pay its employees for the time spent completing the procedure, including time spent waiting in line. The law treats the employees as under the employer’s control during that time, making that time compensable.
Eaton is a partner with the San Diego law firm of Seltzer Caplan McMahon Vitek where his practice focuses on defending and advising employers. He also is an instructor at the San Diego State University Fowler College of Business where he teaches classes in business ethics and employment law. He may be reached at [email protected].
