Except US Supreme Court just said that it's legal [0], and did so unanimously...

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/business/supreme-court-rul...

Governmental legality is not the final say in word definitions or morality.

It is for a lot of people, unfortunately.

It's even part of our culture to take pride in doing bad (immoral) things because it's within the law but is for some supposedly greater good. A particular example of that would be quite a lot of episodes of Law & Order.

Law & Order is deliberately sampling from the scummy tails of the person distribution.

So the judge says the screenings were not “integral and indispensable” and yet they are mandatory. Something seems off here.

I still can't believe they went that way on this one. If there is pre-task an employer requires you to do before they start your main tasks, then that pre-task is still a task and the employee should be paid for it. If you can't figure out how to make that pre-task more efficient, then that is your fault as an employer.

"But people may purposely do things to slow down the pre-task and make money doing their non-task."

Then fire them for being laggards or figure out what is wrong with your process.

When SCOTUS makes a 9-0 ruling that goes the WTF way, it is because the law is (morally) wrong but Constitutional.

In 1802, SCOTUS would rule 9-0 in favor of slavery, because the law was clear. SCOTUS fixes incoherent law, not morally wrong law.

In very specific circumstances. You can't have people show up at 8:30 because you want to eliminate stragglers, or to have meetings in the "downtime" before the "real work" begins.

That is still time from your life that you are dedicating to your job, thus you should be paid.

Also I'm not sure how a meeting for work could be considered non-work, it is again time out of your life that you are doing a task to meet the needs of the company, thus you should be paid for it.

If your company does client work, but doesn't bill meetings to the client, that's their prerogative, but I as an employee should by contract be paid for the work I am doing for my employer. If it's in my contract that I should do meetings without being paid, then I'm probably an idiot for signing that contract.

Truth be told, the only places I've seen that will pay you incrementally by the minute for anything out of the 9-5 will also dock you incrementally by the minute for taking too long of a lunch break, and count the number of bathroom breaks you take.

For salaried work, I don't think it should matter if you show up anytime within 1 hour of the start of business so long as no one is relying on you to be there (e.g. for a meeting or to work hand-in-hand with you).

Maybe my negation didn't carry across the comma properly. Let me say it here: If you are having work meetings, then that counts as your job.

There are lots of things associated with a job that people have to do besides the work itself. I shower in the morning. I get dressed. I commute to work. Those aren't compensated.

From the opinion of the court, "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".

The Portal-to-Portal Act was in response to miners suing for back pay the time they spent moving between mines (after Congress enacted laws that made that seem like a winnable case). It was understood and customary that the time was to be unpaid (thus presumably their wages already took that into account).

The relevant portions of the Portal-to-Portal Act (as quoted by the court) are:

  (a) Except as provided in subsection (b) [which covers work compensable by
      contract or custom], no employer shall be subject to any liability or
      punishment under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, as amended, ... on
      account of the failure of such employer ... to pay an employee overtime
      compensation, for or on account of any of the following activities of such
      employee engaged in on or after the date of the enactment of this Act— 
	(1) walking, riding, or traveling to and from the actual place of
            performance of the principal activity or activities which such
            employee is employed to perform, and
	(2) activities which are preliminary to or postliminary to said
            principal activity or activities, “which occur either prior to the
            time on any particular workday at which such employee commences, or
            subsequent to the time on any particular workday at which he ceases,
            such principal activity or activities.

So there's an exception for activities which are customarily paid. I am not sure why the court worried that paying these temp workers would go against what the Act was designed to address. Most people would expect a required security screening like this one would be customarily paid time, thus is has to be paid under the law.

A little background on the Portal to Portal history: Ore miners unions tried to get compensated for the time they were in the mines (passing through the portal). At the time, they were only paid once they reached the rock face deep in the mine - not the 3 to 40 minutes it took to reach the face.

http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context...

The problem is that once an abuse is pervasive enough, it becomes "customary". See also: " expectation of privacy".

So? That just said that (in the courts opinion) the way the law is written permits it -- i.e., that if it's wrong, you need to address Congress or fix it.