This curious story caught my eye as I was reading the business section of the New York Times yesterday. A man named Jesse Busk is suing Amazon because, after his 12-hour shift at its warehouse in Las Vegas, he was required to wait in line for a security screening along with other workers to see if they had stolen any goods. Busk maintained that he should be paid for the additional 25 minutes because it was a required part of his workday. His employer and other employers obviously were opposed to paying him for the extra time.
Mr. Busk has since been laid off. He said it was unfair not to be paid for the extra time after such a long day.
Two things got my attention in this story. First, I thought this country had long ago accepted that a man or woman should. Not work more than eight hours a day, forty hours a week. I was wrong. As I continued reading about the rationales for and against Mr. Busk’s contention, I discovered that the Obama administration was supporting employers, not the worker. Naturally, I found myself wondering what would Harry Truman or FDR or JFK have done. Which side would they be on.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
JFK stood up to U.S. Steel at great political risk and faced them down. I have no idea why Obama even calls himself a Democrat.
Obama is just miffed that he doesn’t get paid for the time he spends in security screening.
Oh wait …
LOL
Standing in line is not working.
It is if your employer tells you to stand in line. Not a difficult concept.
The contractor ensures they stand in line, because the contractor is too cheap to pay for sufficient security checkpoints. It’s in the brief.
They’re shifting the cost of doing business from the employer to the employees.
The contractor COULD move them faster and let them go home by having enough checkpoints for hundreds of low wage workers who all get off shift at the same time, but why should they? It doesn’t cost the contractor anything to let them stand in line. The employees are picking up the security cost for Amazon. Six dollars and change a day, each employee. That’s what the employees are donating to Amazon.
I’m really disappointed in the Obama Labor Department. I knew the Obama education team were anti-labor, but an anti-labor labor dept is a new low for Democrats.
Da Couch… if their day is done then they should be free to leave. So why are they not free to leave? Oh.. Amazon wants to check to see if they are stealing things so they require employees to stand in line. This is Amazon time NOT EMPLOYEE TIME. Otherwise the employees are being held against their will. This is crazy. Huh???? Under communism in the former Czechoslovakia, nobody could enter a store without holding onto a basket and guards would sit high above the store on special seats to check for thievery. The automatic assumption was that people are up to no good. If Amazon wants this hideous policy, they need to pay employees as it is part of their work day. Mark my words if the Amazon accountants determine paying the employees to stand in line (accounting for possible theft) is more costly than the actual theft, suddenly employees would be free to leave. So disgusting – the whole thing.
Right, and you’d be the first one squawking if your employer made you stand in security checkpoint lines after the end of your 12 hour day.
Once people understand that both political parties are controlled by similar interests, they can go back to watching Netflix, and ignore politics like the rest of the population. It is just silly to fake outrage to these events. You are either in the top 1-5% or you are a slave. This is how most of human history has been. It won’t end well for the public schools or the bottom 90%. They simply have no power or say in this society.
I am with you mike. It is difficult enough to maintain survival mode.
Giving up is a cop out. Things could be worse, and the reason they’re not is that some of our ancestors did not quit the struggle. This is one of the points of Goldstein’s “Plato at the Googleplex”: through philosophical thinking and argument we have made progress in ethics. Athenians enslaved war captives and stuck them in low-ceilinged sliver mines; few survived more than a year. An Amazon warehouse has very high ceilings –see, progress!
Plus it can be very gratifying to irritate the powerful by speaking inconvenient truths to them.
Finally someone who gets it! I’m so tired of all the morons with their “right wing this” and “liberal that”. Both parties are under corporate control and serve only one interest. Your assumption about being a slave if not in the top 1 to 5 percent of earners is also fact. At least you have realized what many still are to ignorant to accept. People need to stop putting their faith in politicians for the game is ultimately rigged. The only way to change our course requires extreme measures. Stop participating in elections when the candidates are basically hand picked corporate stooges, stop paying taxes and demand real government by the people for the people not government for the corporations whom just happen to be people.
Also, he’s not suing Amazon. He doesn’t work for Amazon. He works for the contractor Amazon hires to avoid actually employing people. It’s better for Amazon if they don’t actually “employ” the low wage temp workers they rely on.
Click to access 2013.01.13-Brief-in-Opposition.pdf
My son’s girl friend works at PeaPod. She is often there 12 hours a day, 5 days a week. They only get a 20 minute lunch and two 10 minute breaks. I always thought you got at least a 1/2 hour lunch and two 15 minute breaks for every 8 hour shift…but I guess that was back in the good old 1980’s!
“Naturally, I found myself wondering what would Harry Truman or FDR or JFK have done. Which side would they be on.”
Any conclusions?
yet another good reason to support worker cooperatives! Worker owned businesses, with everyone having a fair stake and a say in the way the business is run as well as the outcome of the business is the answer to this godforsaken nonsense!
The guy who is at the head of the frisk line will probably not support it. How much will 1 extra minutes get him.
American security sucks–Soon it will be easier to catch the Ebola virus than lose my Christmas shipment from Amazon Prime. Look at the dismal record of TSA, or protecting our banking and credit cards from Russian hackers as well as being able to easily jump the White House fence and make it all the way in. Or making the president ride an elevator with an ex-con packing a gun. Wait, don’t forget the phony deaf interpreter who made wild hand gestures while standing next to Obama. And my personal favorite–the Party Crashers!! But on the other hand, the Secret Service certainly knows how to Par-tay!!
Amazon should be able to afford the best security procedures in the world without having to do a strip search…..but I thought the president had that as well. Maybe that’s why Obama is so pissed.
Now if that same employee makes cracks about teachers’ salaries, benefits and due process, then I say make him wait longer!! The mantra of today seems to be “Be happy to have a job!” Is it fair, no! So hire more people to do the search to get them out at a reasonable time. But then, who will search the searchers??
“Amazon should be able to afford the best security procedures in the world without having to do a strip search”
One of the crazy thingg about Amazon is that it still makes essentially no money. It’s like a wormhole to 1997.
Maybe Amazon qualifies then as a non-profit?
MarhVale,
Some have called Amazon a non-profit.
There is this from Slate:
The company’s shares are down a bit today, but the company’s stock is taking a much less catastrophic plunge in already-meager profits than Apple, whose stock plunged simply because its Q4 profits increased at an unexpectedly slow rate. That’s because Amazon, as best I can tell, is a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers. The shareholders put up the equity, and instead of owning a claim on a steady stream of fat profits, they get a claim on a mighty engine of consumer surplus. Amazon sells things to people at prices that seem impossible because it actually is impossible to make money that way. And the competitive pressure of needing to square off against Amazon cuts profit margins at other companies, thus benefiting people who don’t even buy anything from Amazon.
Here is the article: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/01/29/amazon_q4_profits_fall_45_percent.html
Amazon enjoyed a competitive advantage by avoiding sales tax. As that erodes, will consumers continue to pay shipping costs and sales tax? Amazon Prime may save them there, but someone pays. But no argument from me on high P/E ratios on companies barely turning a profit. Bizarre.
Didn’t know that so thanks for the info. But I do know that many of their products are priced higher than Target and other outlets. Will be reading those articles.
If I recall Econ 101 correctly, “making no money” is a strategy for building a monopoly. You set prices so low that you kill off competition and then you jack up prices and reap huge profits when customers have but little choice. Cf. Netflix.
Ponderosa,
Monopoly is a question of barriers to entry. If Amazon can prevent any one from starting a retailer in your town, it can excursive pricing power without regard to potential competitors.
You think there are no alternatives to Netflix? Everything that Netflix carries is but a click away, usually for free.
Obama, up to those dirty Socialist tricks he’s known for again. Wait, is that right? Is he a Socialist or a Fascist? I’m confused. Maybe Faux News can sort this out..
Can Amazon cut costs further and pay for half as many security checkpoints and thus steal 12 dollars a day (one hour) from their employees? What about if I’m a warehouse staffing contractor who wants to compete with Integrity Staffing and offer Amazon a better rate? Can I cut costs further on # of security checkpoints per 100 employees, steal 12 dollars a day from each employee, and thus win the contract?
Maybe the Supreme Court better come up with a number. An employer may steal 30 minutes from each employee every day to cover some of the employer’s security costs, but not 60 minutes.
“The administration argued that the security check at the Amazon warehouse was little different from a security check at an airport that construction workers must go through on their way to a project at the airport. The 11th Circuit has ruled that the time spent in that airport security check was not compensable and not integral to the job, on the grounds that it was ordered by the Federal Aviation Administration, not the employer, and was not of particular benefit to the employer.”
You see, AMAZON isn’t * technically* ‘the employer” so it’s not like the contractor is ordering the security check, Amazon is, and the security check doesn’t benefit Amazon’s contractor, it benefits Amazon!
So glad these prestigious and learned government lawyers we’re all paying are working so hard to take 6 dollars a day from temps who make 12 dollars an hour.
Has Integrity or Amazon made “significant” donations to Obama or the DNC or any off-shoots.? Additionally, who are the names on these briefs and what is their background and from where did they come? What a legacy! Stunning and stupefying. Progressive? I think not.
I’ll never get a job with Amazon after this. Perhaps they should do what the drug gangs and cartels do. Have their workers work in their underwear. Problem solved.