Standing in line waiting to have your temperature taken – at some point over the last year, most of us have had this experience. At youth sports games, at the gym, at daycare, and of course, at your place of employment. A year ago, at the outset of the pandemic, we warned employers that measuring worker temperatures without paying for the time spent performing this task might lead to wage and hour claims. And it appears that our warning was prophetic. With the boom of COVID-19 workplace lawsuits upon us, some employers are now facing a “long line” of their own – a line of employees who want to sue for waiting time.
Examples of Recent Cases
Recent class and collective lawsuits are starting to reveal a particular trend of litigation where employees are claiming they were not paid for waiting in line for temperature screenings. For instance, a Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) action filed in California a few months ago alleges (in part) that employees of Santa Fe Mercados were required to “wait in line and submit to mandatory temperature checks for COVID-19 screening prior to clocking into Defendant’s timekeeping system for the workday.” The plaintiffs in this case claim that the time they spent waiting in line to get their temperature checked was working off-the-clock, and as a result, their time was not correctly recorded and they did not receive minimum wage and overtime payments required by California law.
Another case, Abarca v. Cantaloupe Holdings, LLC, which was filed in California a few weeks ago, contains similar allegations. The Complaint alleges that the employer established policies and standard operating procedures to minimize the risk of the spread of COVID-19. As a result, the lawsuit claims, the company required the plaintiff in question and other aggrieved employees to go through a body temperature screening checkpoint process, which required employees to wait in a long line to have their temperature checked. It was only after this process that employees were able to clock in for work. The plaintiff in this claim alleges that the long wait in the temperature screening line resulted in unpaid minimum wage and overtime to a class of plaintiffs.
And these two cases are not unique. A quick review of the wage and hour filings around the country shows that this trend might be here for the foreseeable future.
Status of the Law Regarding Waiting Time
Federal and state courts don’t appear to have ruled on whether employers are required to pay employees for time spent waiting in line to have their temperature taken. U.S. Supreme Court decisions and other recent court decisions provide some guidance on how courts may rule in a wage and hour claim for employee body temperature checks. Under federal law, there are two key questions to determine whether this time is compensable:
- Is measuring an employee’s…
Read More: Heat Check: Employee Temperature Screenings are Leading To COVID-19 Wage