Employees of AirTouch who worked for the cellular provider filed a putative class action alleging that the AirTouch employees were entitled to additional wages under California’s “reporting time pay” requirements. The plaintiffs alleged that they were owed reporting time pay for days on which they were required to attend store meetings, which lasted only a short period of time, but were not scheduled to work after the meetings.

California law requires an employer to pay “reporting time pay” under the applicable Wage Order, which states:

Each workday an employee is required to report for work and does report, but is not put to work or is furnished less than half said employee’s usual or scheduled day’s work, the employee shall be paid for half the usual or scheduled day’s work, but in no event for less than two (2) hours nor more than four (4) hours, at the employee’s regular rate of pay, which shall not be less than the minimum wage.

AirTouch would schedule store meetings that all employees were required to attend.  The meetings were scheduled at least four days in advance and were usually held on a Saturday or Sunday before the stores opened.  The meetings lasted from one hour to an hour and a half. Plaintiffs argued because the employees were required to report for the work meetings, which only lasted one to one and a half hours, and then did not work after the meetings, the employees were entitled to two hours of pay under the reporting time pay requirement. 

In rejecting plaintiffs’ argument that the Wage Orders required employers to always pay employees two hours of work when required to report to work, the court stated the following:

To simplify, the issue may be framed by the following question: If an employee’s only scheduled work for the day is a mandatory meeting of one and a half hours, and the employee works a total of one hour because the meeting ends a half hour early, is the employer required to pay reporting time pay pursuant to subdivision 5(A) of Wage Order 4 in addition to the one hour of wages?

The answer to this question is no, because the employee was furnished work for more than half the scheduled time. The employee would be entitled to receive one hour of wages for the actual time worked, but would not be entitled to receive additional compensation as reporting time pay. Although somewhat lengthy and cumbersome, Wage Order 4’s reporting time pay provision is not ambiguous. There is only one reasonable interpretation of subdivision 5(A) as it pertains to scheduled work—when an employee is scheduled to work, the minimum two-hour pay requirement applies only if the employee is furnished work for less than half the scheduled time.

It is important to note a few critical facts of this case. The employer scheduled the meeting times and provided employees with at least four days’ notice of the scheduled meetings. Also, the employees always worked at least half the duration of each scheduled period for the meetings. The case, Aleman v. AirTouch Cellular can be read here.