The United States Supreme Court recently decided that hourly warehouse workers in Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc v Busk were not entitled to compensation under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) for time spent undergoing a lengthy antitheft security screening at the end of each work day. No. 13-433, 2014 WL 6885951 (US December 9, 2014).

Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. provides warehouse staffing to Amazon.com in various areas. The employees in the case retrieved products from shelves and packaged them for delivery to Amazon customers. At the end of each work day Integrity Staffing required its employees to undergo an approximate 25-minute antitheft security check. The employees wanted to be compensated for this time, alleging that they were entitled to compensation under FLSA.

SCOTUS disagreed with the employees, however, relying on the "Portal-to-Portal Act" which limits FLSA and creates an exemption for activities that are preliminary or postliminary to the "principal activities" an employee is employed to perform. "Principal activities," as interpreted by SCOTUS, captures "all activities which are an ‘integral and indispensable part of the principal activities.’" "[A]n activity is integral and indispensable to the principal activities that an employee is employed to perform—and thus compensable under the FLSA—if it is an intrinsic element of those activities and one with which the employee cannot dispense if he is to perform his principal activities."

Applying these interpretations here, SCOTUS determined that the security checks were not an integral and indispensable part of the employees' principal activities. The Court found that "Integrity Staffing did not employ its workers to undergo security screenings, but to retrieve products from warehouse shelves and package those products for shipment to Amazon customers." And, "Integrity Staffing could have eliminated the screenings altogether without impairing the employees' ability to complete their work."

As a result, the screenings at issue were deemed "noncompensable postliminary activities" and Integrity Staffing was not required to pay its employees for this time.