>The FLSA establishes minimum wage and overtime compensation for the time that employees work over 40 hours in one work week. Congress constructed the Act so that employers are not required to compensate employees for activities that occur before and after shifts unless those activities are integral and indispensable to the work an employee is employed to perform.
The employer will fire you for not doing it. That makes it essential.
Any interpretation of such a law that uses the job description, eg packing and moving boxes, as the be-all-end-all of what is "integral and essential" instead of what the employer will fire or refuse to employ you for not doing is either bought and paid for or anti-labor.
This issue boils down to whether people have to work 8 vs. 9 hours for a certain amount of pay, with some paperwork issues piled on top. It matters but there aren't any human rights involved in any meaningful way. The law isn't inherently invalid.
If you mean "hold you against your will", they can't do that.
If you mean "you have to do it to stay employed", they can.
The question here is how pay is calculated. It's not whether the security checks themselves are a problem.
Yes. Specifically, whether your employer can make you do work that they don't define as work and therefore don't pay, even though it has all the characteristics of work: Being where they tell you when they tell you doing what they tell you.
That's why this is being fought with state law, not the constitution. The federal law is doing something stupid, but the stupidity is mostly an accounting trick. Everyone is still getting paid for their total labor.
I see we won't agree here, so I'm out.