Fact Check: Off-the-Clock Work Laws by State

The Portal-to-Portal Act (1947), codified at 29 USC §254, excludes ordinary commute and preliminary/postliminary activities from compensable hours worked under the FLSA

29 CFR §785.7 defines workday/workweek for FLSA compensable-time purposes

29 CFR §785.27 sets a four-prong conjunctive test under which employer training is NOT compensable: (1) outside regular working hours, (2) voluntary attendance, (3) not directly job-related, (4) no productive work performed

29 CFR §785.47 establishes the federal de minimis doctrine — small amounts of time may be disregarded "for enforcement purposes"

California's IWC Wage Orders are the source of the broader "subject to the control of an employer" hours-worked definition; Wage Order 7 was the specific order at issue in Frlekin v. Apple

New York Labor Law §663 plus NYCRR Title 12 define "hours worked" broadly, including time the employee is "required to be available for work"

Massachusetts General Laws c.149 §150 provides for automatic treble damages on wage-and-hour violations

Oregon Revised Statutes §653.010 defines "hours worked" to include time "principally for the benefit of the employer"

Washington Administrative Code WAC 296-126-002 defines "hours worked" to include "all time during which an employee is authorized or required to be on duty"

Colorado's CDLE COMPS Order Rule 1.9 (2020 revision) defines "time worked" to include "all time during which an employee is performing labor or services for the benefit of an employer"

Alaska Statute AS 23.10.060 governs hours of work and generally tracks the federal standard

FLSA statute of limitations is 2 years (3 if willful); California Unfair Competition Law (UCL) extends look-back to 4 years for state-law claims

Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680 (1946), established that when an employer fails to keep adequate time records, the employee may meet the burden of proof by showing "just and reasonable inference" of unpaid hours, with the burden then shifting to the employer

IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U.S. 21 (2005), held that donning and doffing protective gear at a meat-processing plant is integral and indispensable to the principal activity, and that the time between first donning and last doffing (including intervening walking time) is compensable as the "continuous workday"

Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk, 574 U.S. 27 (2014), held unanimously that post-shift mandatory security screenings at Amazon warehouses are NOT compensable under the FLSA because the screenings are not integral and indispensable to the principal activity (warehouse fulfillment)

The Supreme Court's test from Integrity Staffing v. Busk reads verbatim: "An activity is integral and indispensable to the principal activities that an employee is employed to perform if it is an intrinsic element of those activities and one with which the employee cannot dispense if he is to perform his principal activities."

Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo, 577 U.S. 442 (2016), held that representative evidence (average time × number of class members) is admissible to establish class-wide damages when the employer's recordkeeping failure makes individualized proof impractical

Frlekin v. Apple Inc., 8 Cal.5th 1038 (2020), held that mandatory employee bag checks on exit from Apple retail stores ARE compensable as "hours worked" under California IWC Wage Order 7's "subject to the control of an employer" test

Morillion v. Royal Packing Co., 22 Cal.4th 575 (2000), held that employer-required transit (agricultural workers riding company-provided buses to remote fields) IS compensable under California law because employees were "subject to the control" of the employer during the ride

Troester v. Starbucks Corp., 5 Cal.5th 829 (2018), held that California has NOT adopted the federal de minimis doctrine and that an employer "may not evade the obligation to compensate the employee for [off-the-clock] time by invoking the de minimis doctrine" when the work is performed regularly or as a regular feature of the job

Apple settled the Frlekin class action for approximately $30 million

Tyson Foods's pork-processing donning/doffing class action produced approximately $5.8 million in total recovery (~$2.9M jury verdict doubled under FLSA liquidated damages)

Starbucks shift supervisors in the Troester case performed closing tasks for 4–10 minutes after clocking out, daily, totaling approximately $100 in unpaid wages over 17 months

Amazon warehouse workers in Integrity Staffing v. Busk waited up to 25 minutes for post-shift security screenings

The Portal-to-Portal Act was enacted in 1947 as an amendment to the FLSA

Tyson Foods v. Bouaphakeo was decided in 2016; Integrity Staffing v. Busk in 2014; IBP v. Alvarez in 2005; Mt. Clemens Pottery in 1946; Frlekin v. Apple in 2020; Troester v. Starbucks in 2018; Morillion v. Royal Packing in 2000

2024 DOL Field Operations Handbook updates clarified the "continuous workday" rule for hybrid/remote workers

Federal courts have typically applied a ~10-minute-per-day de minimis threshold to FLSA off-the-clock claims

The "knew or had reason to know" standard governs employer FLSA liability for off-the-clock work — receiving 9pm emails, time-record patterns, supervisor observation all create constructive knowledge

California's "control" test (under IWC Wage Orders) is broader than the federal "integral and indispensable" test (under the Portal-to-Portal Act)

California labor commissioner has issued multiple opinion letters since 2018 clarifying that even 1–2 minutes per day of regular off-the-clock work is compensable

Washington State's HB 1155 (healthcare-specific) adds hospital-sector recordkeeping and penalty provisions for break and time violations

Illinois Wage Payment and Collection Act amendments (2024) eased class certification for wage-and-hour claims

DOL Fact Sheet #22 is the canonical agency guidance on FLSA hours-worked compensability