Featured Article at The Federalist Society: The Eighth Circuit Invalidates a Longstanding Rule on Workplace Timekeeping
J. Larry Stine and Elizabeth K. Dorminey co-authored an article for the Federalist Society. Here's a quick summary of what this article, Rounding Error: The Eighth Circuit Invalidates a Longstanding Rule on Workplace Timekeeping, is about.
In a surprise decision, a court invalidated a decades-old rule allowing employers to round employee work time to the nearest quarter-hour, finding it tilted in favor of employers as employees lost more minutes than they gained through rounding. While the rule seemed fair, statistical analysis revealed the system consistently undercompensated most employees, despite advancements in technology that make automatic, minute-by-minute pay calculations possible. This ruling paves the way for stricter policies requiring pay for all time worked, minute by minute, marking a potential end to the era of workplace time rounding.