Does Apple Need to Think Different About Its Time and Attendance Policies?

Most of you have heard by now about Apple's trouble with some former retail store employees who have filed a class action lawsuit for lost wages. Apple has a retail store policy that requires employees to have their personal bags checked by managers for stolen property before leaving the store for breaks, lunches, and at the end of their shift. Apparently, employees sometimes have to wait for as long as 15 minutes after they've already clocked out for this to happen. The former employees claim a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) as well as other state labor laws because they consider this a mandatory job function which they should be compensated for. The lawsuit could potentially affect thousands of employees going back more than 10 years. The central question becomes what constitutes compensable time under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The Apple employees claim they are clocking out and then "engaged to wait" which should be compensable time.

I don't know what Apple's doing for time and attendance tracking, but it would sure be easy to set up a networked time clock by each entrance and just let employees punch out after the mandatory search has been completed. Or even better, have the manager clock the employee out when the search is done.

Jeff Morrow
Virtual TimeClock Product Manager
Redcort Software, Inc.

New York City Requires Paid Sick Leave

New York City has become the latest place to require employers to provide paid sick leave benefits for employees. New York City may not be the first place this has happened, but it is the most populous. New York City joins Seattle, San Francisco, Washington DC, and the state of Connecticut in requiring employers to provide paid time off for employee illness. The new law will go into effect in 2014 for employers with 20 or more workers and at a later date for smaller employers.

Those in favor of the new law cite studies that have shown companies that provide paid sick days to employees tend to have lower turnover, lower costs of hiring new employees, fewer employee absences, and better productivity. They argue that when workers don’t take time off when starting to get ill, they often end up taking longer absences as their condition worsens. Also, when employees come to work with contagious illnesses, they spread them to co-workers, increasing absences and lowering the productivity of other workers.

If you're looking for an easy way to accrue and track paid sick leave benefits, check out our free time clock software demo.

Jeff Morrow
Virtual TimeClock Product Manager
Redcort Software, Inc.