Big Win for Hourly California Workers
Employers Must Pay for Small Amounts of Off-the-Clock Work, Removing the ‘De Minimis’ rule from California Law
AGOURA HILLS, California: On Thursday, July 26, 2018, the California Supreme Court released its opinion on Troester v. Starbucks. The justices unanimously agreed that Starbucks and other California employers must compensate workers for tasks they regularly perform even if off the clock and even if they only take a few minutes, such as store closing duties, setting alarms, and locking the store, by example. Marlin & Saltzman co-founding partner, Stanley D. Saltzman argued the case to the Supreme Court, on behalf of a class of approximately 10,000 Starbucks employees who worked the store closing shifts.
“We are overwhelmed by the Supreme Court’s decision to remove the so-called federal ‘de minimis’ rule from the body of California law,” said plaintiff’s attorney, Stan Saltzman. “And we are heartened that employers are now being told, very clearly, that they cannot require their workers to regularly perform minutes per day of unpaid labor.”
This ruling affects companies throughout the state. In its opinion, the high court noted that the California labor code has never adopted the ‘de minimis’ rule found in the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The Federal law has been applied in circumstances where the compensable time worked off the clock was supposedly either too small or too difficult to record from an administrative perspective.
The Court emphatically wrote, “What Starbucks calls ‘de minimis’ is not de minimis at all to many ordinary people who work for hourly wages.”
“This matter will be remanded to the Ninth Circuit, which is expected to issue a decision consistent with the Supreme Court’s ruling,” Saltzman told reporters.
Since 1985, the firm of Marlin & Saltzman has filed hundreds of class actions, helping millions of client class members gain fair compensation for their employment and consumer injuries and damages, and has also handled catastrophic injury claims. In its 30 years of experience, Marlin & Saltzman has recovered almost $1 Billion dollars for its clients; becoming a preeminent law firm throughout California and the entire nation. Stanley D. Saltzman is a highly respected trial lawyer, consistently recognized as a Southern California SuperLawyer in the area of employment class action and wage and hour law.
