« Go Green, Get Green |
Main
| Blaming the Defendant, Even When the Penalty Is Death »
Can Employees Be Booted for Wasting Time While Computer Boots Up?
Seems like some companies will do anything to squeeze an extra 30 minutes of work out of employees. Believe it or not, companies actually have the gall to dock employees' pay for the time spent waiting for their computers to boot up, reports the National Law Journal (subs. only). Though skimming off an extra quarter or half hour may not seem like much, it adds up over the course of a week or month, which means that employees are losing significant pay.
You'd think that it would be obvious that time spent waiting for a computer to boot up would constitute time on the job, but Richard Rosenblatt, of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, argues otherwise:
They go have a smoke, talk to friends, get coffee — they're not working, and all they've done at that point is press a button to power up their computer, or enter in a key word.
As the California Wage Law Blog points out, lawyers like Richard Rosenblatt probably don't stop the clock when they sit in court only to find that the judge is twenty minutes late. In the meantime, if employers don't like the idea of employees wasting time while a computer boots up, the answer is simple: Invest in a new computer system.
Posted by Carolyn Elefant on November 20, 2008 at 02:22 PM | Permalink
| Comments (0)