carnegie

gatorguy said:

carnegie said:

gatorguy said:

Dogperson said:

 This is interesting because in 2014 the Supreme Court ruled against employees of an Amazon temp agency for the same leaving the plant time pay issue .

The technical difference between Amazon and this case is that it was a third party who contracted with Amazon to supply temporary employees while Apple is the first party. Because that third party's contract with those workers did not stipulate they would be paid "for standing in lines" while at Amazon SCOTUS found it to be a contract law issue, a contract between the 3rd party and workers rather than with Amazon directly, and not strictly worker's rights and reversed the lower court. 

The difference between the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Integrity Staffing Solutions v Busk (2014) and the California Supreme Court’s recent finding in Frlekin v Apple is that the former involved an interpretation of federal law and the latter involved an interpretation of California state law.

It didn’t matter in the Integrity Staffing Solutions case that they provided warehouse staff to Amazon. What mattered was whether their policies violated the FLSA as amended by the Portal-to-Portal Act. The case wasn’t about interpreting a contract, it was about interpreting the FLSA.

The nine-page opinion in the Busk case was written by Justice Clarence Thomas.

“If the test could be satisfied merely by the fact that an employer required an activity, it would sweep into ‘principal activities’ the very activities that the Portal-to-Portal Act was designed to address,” wrote Justice Thomas, adding that the screenings were not part of the duties the workers were hired to perform.

The job descriptions for the employees per contract with Integrity Staffing involve tasks along the lines of retrieving products, packaging, and shipping to customers. Nowhere in the job descriptions for companies, in this case Amazon,  was there a mention of the employee going through security screenings.

That's right; I've read the opinion.

The security screenings weren't part of the employee's duties, that's part of why ISS not paying them for that time wasn't a violation of the FLSA. More to the point of the legal consideration, those screenings weren't "integral and indespensable" to their work  duties.

The point is, that had nothing to do with the fact that ISS was providing staff to Amazon. These could have been Amazon employees and there still wouldn't have, under the FLSA, been a legal requirement for Amazon to pay them for that time. This was about whether the employer's policies - spelled out in an employment contract or not - violated the FLSA. Just because an employment contract doesn't say that X is among an employee's work duties, that doesn't mean that under the FLSA that X isn't compensable. There's more to the consideration than whether or not an employee contract says something is an employee's duty.

At any rate, the difference between the cases we're talking about is that they are interpreting different laws. What is required under California law is different than what is required under federal law.

irnchriz said:

Nothing wrong with being profit driven for shareholders but as they make so much money with massive margins they really could afford to actually be good guys at all levels of business. Instead they end up looking like dicks fighting this in court rather than changing their ways and coming off like a scumbag penny pinching employer.

I’d agree that this issue probably tends to make Apple look bad to a lot of the people who are aware of it.

But I don’t think the policy was created to save Apple money. It was likely a matter of practicality, and the amount of money involved would have been pretty small.

Apple wants to search employee’ bags as they leave work. That makes some sense, And however hourly employees clocked out of work, that probably didn’t happen at the front of stores. Having them clock in at the front of stores might not have been practical. But that is where searches have to happen, at least in some cases. So how can employees have bags searched first and then clock out? That would mean going back into the store and then leaving again, which would defeat the purpose of the search.

Apple’s expert testified that a high end estimate for the average time spent waiting for and undergoing exit searches was 30 seconds. That makes sense to me. The longer times mentioned were likely aberrations. In most cases, it was probably just a momentary pause as an employee exits, not adding much to the time it already took an employee to leave the store after they’d clocked out.

Perhaps we’ll see what plaintiffs are able to prove when it comes to the average amount of time taken to do these searches. But I expect the ultimate award, if this case isn’t settled, will be pretty small.

At any rate, this policy seems more about what was practical than what saved Apple a few bucks. If there were an easy way to track the time spent waiting for and undergoing searches, I doubt Apple would have minded paying for that time. Maybe Apple should have just added a minute to the time whenever someone clocked out?

If anyone here has worked in Apple retail, would you want to share how clocking in and out works? Is it done at a particular spot in the back of the store? Does an employee use their own phone to do it and it can be done anywhere in the store?

gatorguy said:

Dogperson said:

 This is interesting because in 2014 the Supreme Court ruled against employees of an Amazon temp agency for the same leaving the plant time pay issue .

The technical difference between Amazon and this case is that it was a third party who contracted with Amazon to supply temporary employees while Apple is the first party. Because that third party's contract with those workers did not stipulate they would be paid "for standing in lines" while at Amazon SCOTUS found it to be a contract law issue, a contract between the 3rd party and workers rather than with Amazon directly, and not strictly worker's rights and reversed the lower court. 

The difference between the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Integrity Staffing Solutions v Busk (2014) and the California Supreme Court’s recent finding in Frlekin v Apple is that the former involved an interpretation of federal law and the latter involved an interpretation of California state law.

It didn’t matter in the Integrity Staffing Solutions case that they provided warehouse staff to Amazon. What mattered was whether their policies violated the FLSA as amended by the Portal-to-Portal Act. The case wasn’t about interpreting a contract, it was about interpreting the FLSA.

Dogperson said:

 This is interesting because in 2014 the Supreme Court ruled against employees of an Amazon temp agency for the same leaving the plant time pay issue .

That was an interpretation of federal law. This is an interpretation of California law.

B-Mc-C said:

Can someone help me understand why Apple continues to perform accelerated share repurchases from large institutions at significant premium to market prices (30%+) rather than just exclusively purchasing shares on the open market? I had always assumed it was because such massive open market buying would bid up market prices to about that same level, but as this article states, they were able to buy 40 million shares on the open market for $10 billion, versus only 30 million shares via ASRs for the same price. Not only are they rewarding the firms with enough power to pump and dump the stock, but they’re basically losing money by overpaying for those shares. What gives? Serious question.

We don’t know how many shares Apple will get through that $10 billion ASR. The purchase period for it runs (or could run) through May 2020. The 30.396 million is the number of shares which were delivered to Apple this quarter, starting in November. More shares will be delivered, or already have been delivered since the end of the quarter. The ASR basically means that Apple will have bought $10 billion worth of shares at whatever the average share price of the stock turns out to be for the period of the agreement - November through May.

EDIT: I should add that one of the reasons for doing these ASR agreements is that they are effectively hedges against short-term declines in the stock price. If the share price continues to go up, then Apple will end up paying a higher price for the shares than it would have had it just bought that much worth of shares at the time of the agreement. But if the stock price goes down for a while, Apple will end up paying a lower price for the shares than it would have had it just bought that much worth of shares at the time of the agreement.

Apple isn’t necessarily betting that the share price will go down in the short-term, as it’s also buying shares in the open market at or about the same time that it’s entering into the ASR agreement. It’s just effectively hedging the timing of those share buybacks.