Wage and Hour Defense Blog

For decades, many employers have rounded non-exempt employees’ work time when calculating their compensation.  Maybe they have rounded employee work time to the nearest 10 minutes, maybe to the nearest quarter hour, but they done it. And, generally, the courts have approved of the practice.

But as more and more lawsuits are filed challenging the practice, and as the courts begin to review time-rounding more frequently and more critically, the question employers with time-rounding policies should ask themselves today is this:  Why are we still rounding our employees’ time?

I had planned to focus this month’s installment of “Time Is Money” on the practice of rounding timeclock entries, addressing the history behind the practice as well as factors that make rounding today a riskier proposition than it used to be.  Then, while reviewing our previous writings on the subject, I came across my colleague Mike Kun’s treatment of the topic in our July 2019 installment, where he already said pretty much everything I had to say.

Back at the drawing board, it occurred to me that rounding is part of a broader challenge that businesses face: how best to record ...

It seems as though there is a minefield that employers must navigate to ensure that they fulfill their wage and hour obligations to their employees. Employers must somehow comply with overlapping and seemingly contradictory federal, state, district, county, and local requirements. The wave of civil actions that are filed against employers alleging wage and hour violations is not slowing. And given the potential financial consequences for non-compliance, illustrated in part by a $102 million award for technical paystub violations, meeting these requirements must be a ...

For decades, employers have rounded non-exempt employees’ work time when calculating their compensation.  Maybe they have rounded employee work time to the nearest 10 minutes, maybe to the nearest quarter hour, but they done it and, generally, the courts have approved of it.

But the question employers with time-rounding policies should ask themselves today is this:  Why are we still rounding our employees’ time?

If your answer to that question is Because we have always done it, or Because someone told us it is lawful, it might be time to rethink the issue.

(And if your answer is ...

One of the top stories featured on Employment Law This Week: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reaffirms an employer’s time-rounding practice. A call-center employee in California recently brought a class action lawsuit against his employer for time-rounding practices. The employee claims that the policy caused him to be underpaid by a total of $15 over 13 months. Relying on a California Court of Appeals precedent, the Ninth Circuit found that the company’s facially neutral rounding policy—one that rounds time both up and down—is legal under California ...

On May 2, 2016, the Ninth Circuit issued a published opinion in Corbin v. Time Warner Entertainment-Advance/Newhouse Partnership. The Corbin Court best summarized the action in its opening sentence: “This case turns on $15.02 and one minute.” The “$15.02” represented the wages the plaintiff claimed he lost over a period of time as a result of the company’s neutral time-rounding policy. And the “one minute” represented the amount of off-the-clock time that the plaintiff worked, which the Court held was de minimis and, therefore, not compensable.

Federal and ...

By Michael Kun and Aaron Olsen

Following up on the California Supreme Court’s recent decision in See’s Candy v. Superior Court, a California federal court has now dismissed a time-rounding class action against H.J. Heinz Company.  And, once again, the court has relied upon the decision in our case Alonzo v. Maximus

This, of course, is more good news for employers with operations in California.  Between See’s Candy and Maximus, it will be exceedingly hard for plaintiffs to proceed with time-rounding class actions against employers who have even-handed time-rounding policies ...

By Michael Kun and Aaron Olsen

Agreeing with the recent federal district court opinion in our case Alonzo v. MAXIMUS, Inc., 832 F.Supp.2d 1122, 1126 (2011), the California Court of Appeals has confirmed in a case against See’s Candy that California employers may round employees’ time entries so long as the employer’s rounding policy does not consistently result in a failure to pay employees for time worked.

In  Alonzo, a federal district court granted summary judgment in favor of our client MAXIMUS, Inc. on the plaintiffs’ time rounding claims.  The Alonzo Court explained that ...