HR Q & A: Paying employees for time worked

Mildred, an employee here in Las Vegas, has a concern:

Business has been slow and we’re looking for ways to cut costs.  We’ve had several days when we open our doors (we’re in retail) and we don’t have any customers for 15 to 30 minutes.  The manager doesn’t want to pay workers until a customer shows up.  Legal?

HR’s Response:

No.  When employees report to work at their scheduled time, but there is no work to do, they can’t be told not to clock in until business picks up.  The time employees spend waiting for something to do is work time that must be paid.

Recently, a car wash in California was dinged by the U.S. Dept of Labor (DOL) for over $268,000 in unpaid back wages because it required employees to arrive at their scheduled work times, but then they waited to be placed on the clock based on the volume of cars.  Employees waited between 15 minutes to over an hour each workday and were not paid for this time.

If you don’t want to pay, you must give up control over the down time.  The DOL states that waiting time need not be paid if the employer:

• immediately tells the employees they are not needed;
• completely relieves them of duty; and
• gives them a specific report-back time, which enables the employees to use the time for their own benefit.

If employees are only told to wait until they are needed, and are not given a specific report-back time that is long enough to use for their own benefit, all of the waiting time must be counted as hours worked.

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