Should You Get Paid While Your Computer Boots?

An anonymous reader notes a posting up at a law blog with the provocative title Does Your Boss Have to Pay You While You Wait for Vista to Boot Up?. (Provocative because Vista doesn't boot more slowly than anything else, necessarily, as one commenter points out.) The National Law Journal article behind the post requires subscription. Quoting: "Lawyers are noting a new type of lawsuit, in which employees are suing over time spent booting [up] their computers. ... During the past year, several companies, including AT&T Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Cigna Corp., have been hit with lawsuits in which employees claimed that they were not paid for the 15- to 30-minute task of booting their computers at the start of each day and logging out at the end. Add those minutes up over a week, and hourly employees are losing some serious pay, argues plaintiffs' lawyer Mark Thierman, a Las Vegas solo practitioner who has filed a handful of computer-booting lawsuits in recent years. ... [A] management-side attorney... who is defending a half-dozen employers in computer-booting lawsuits... believes that, in most cases, computer booting does not warrant being called work."

Yes.

Do people who work at the local McDonalds get paid for preparing the restaurant to open at the beginning of each business day and for closing up shop at the end? I sure hope so.

This is the exact same situation. If the employers don't like it, they can pay someone to set up a script to automatically boot the computer half an hour before the start of the business day. I'm sure they can justify the cost once the cost is actually there.

Re:Yes.

Actually, the service industry is a bad example. I worked at a convenience store for a summer and my wife worked at a coffee shop for a while. Both of us stopped getting paid when the doors were locked despite the fact that there was still cleanup to be done. The theory was that we were supposed to be cleaning as the shift was winding down, but time and customers rarely allowed for that. Crappy summer jobs aren't necessarily comparable to career jobs, however (unless you're unfortunate enough to have a crappy service job as your career) because both of us had the option to leave and take better jobs where we were paid fairly.

Re:Yes.

They probably "punch in" on their PC, which is an interesting ploy by the employer. But I agree. The second you're in the door or at your desk, the clock has started. You are "at work".

Re:Yes.

Many corporations are now utilizing virtual time clock software, requiring hourly employees to clock in via their PC. Couple that with a hypothetical policy of having to shut down PCs overnight to save power, and presto, employees don't get paid for booting.

Solution

who is defending a half-dozen employers in computer-booting lawsuits... believes that, in most cases, computer booting does not warrant being called work."

Then don't do it. Leave the computer off, and ask your boss when to begin working.

What do you think?

I get paid to post on Slashdot.

30 minutes?

Which 486 are they using, the 50 or 66 MHz? The faster clock of the 66 may seem like a win, but the 50 MHz version has the faster bus speed.

Re:30 minutes?

The faster clock of the 66 may seem like a win, but the 50 MHz version has the faster bus speed.

Only the DX. The DX2 is actually a double clock speed of a 25 MHZ.

I tried them both with Xwing, and the 66MHZ wins hands down.

No.

The person who telecommutes would not get paid for that time, why should the person in office?

Re:No.

The person who telecommutes would not get paid for that time, why should the person in office?

Telecommuters can flick the switch and literally get on with something completely not work related - eat breakfast, shower, masturbate, or have sex while the computer boots. Last i checked that was frowned at work, but I guess it depends on the industry.

Re:No.

...or have sex while the computer boots

Actually I had sex while on conference calls a few times. Thank god for mute, both for my sake and for the sake of coworkers. My ex was a screamer. Good memories, I tell you.

Re:No.

The person who telecommutes would not get paid for that time, why should the person in office?

Because the person who is at the office is getting paid for doing one additional thing that the telecommuter isn't being paid for: being at the office.

If the employer told me to be there at 9am, I don't care if there's work to be done or not. Time isn't free, and I could be doing something else at 9am. I could be sleeping in, I could be doing laundry, I could be playing video games. If part of my job is to be at the office at 9am, then I get paid for being there at 9am, whether or not I'm waiting for my tools to be ready or for them to tell me what to do.

If he tells me to be there at 9 and stay until 5, and doesn't give me any work, should he pay me for that time? How would you justify answering "no" to that?

If my employer *really* wants me to start working as soon as I get in, he can pay someone to go through the office at 8:45am and start turning the computers on before I clock in. Oh, that costs money? He could leave the computers on all night. Oh, that costs electricity? It's all a balance, but it's still part of the cost of operating the business. If I'm expected to turn it on, then it's part of my job's duties, and thus it's obviously something that I need to be paid to do.

I'm in the building

That sitting at my desk waiting on the computer doesn't get anything done is irrelevant.

It started with being 10 minutes early. Then it was at your desk and working at 9 am. Now at your desk waiting for your PC to "show up to work" so you can log in and start getting paid.

Besides, if this goes... the next stop is monitoring software measuring every second that you are actually inputting.

Situation more complicated that it seems

Employers generally refuse to pay workers for the time between walking in the door of the factory and reaching the production floor on the theory that they are only going to pay for actual production time. Because of regulations on hourly wages and minimum wage laws this is a big issue. This dispute is partly resolved by the "Portal-to-Portal Act", which generally says (IANAL) that employees have to be paid for tasks which are related to their job (expansively defined). This means that you don't get paid for travelling to work, or for extra hours just because you arrive early, but once the workday starts they can't decline to pay you for the time it takes to put on your safety gear for example, even though putting on safety gear isn't literally your job on the production floor (the Supreme Court has opined on this several times). In this case the employers are claiming that you don't start doing your job until the computer boots up. Now if you weren't required to show up until the boot process is over they may have a case, but otherwise it's rather odd: booting the computer looks (to me) clearly related to using the computer to do stuff.

my time, my paycheck

in most cases, computer booting does not warrant being called work

The way I look at it is I'm being paid for my time. Time that I can't be off doing something I want to do. How much I get paid for my time of course depends on what I can accomplish with the time they are buying from me.

But for ME, time spent sitting idle at work, time that my employer is requiring me to be there, is time I should be paid for. How many people would be OK with their boss saying hey how about you come in an hour early and leave an hour late starting tomorrow? Not on the clock or anything, I just want you to BE here. You don't have to work. But it's going to be a new requirement around here.

Sounds silly and of course you can't find anyone that would be OK with that, but that's just this issue taken to a little of an extreme to prove a point. Your time is your time. If they want you to give some of it up, they better be paying for it. If it took me 15 minutes to get the computer booted up to punch in, and after I punched out I was required to spend another 15 in the office waiting for it to shut down, you can bet I'd be having a talk with my manager about compensation for my lost 65 hrs of pay a year. That's a week and a half of paycheck lost a year. Not really lost, time TAKEN by your employer without compensation.

Little stuff like that adds up. Don't let them fool you by saying oh it's only 15 minutes, you don't mind that do you? That's cheating me, pure and simple.

The real problem

The problem is that many employers use a time keeping system which pays employees based on when they log into some system. For example, a friend of mine works through manpower as a temp for $10/hour just answering phones all day. When she gets to work, she must turn on the computer, and wait for it to boot, which is not the same as home computer because it boots from a network and has to log into a Citrix server somewhere. That takes a bit longer. Then, once a desktop appears, you have to open the "soft phone" software to control the phone and log into the queue. Only then do you actually start getting paid.

There is no way for the employer to know that an employee is at work and working unless they are logged into the soft phone. This means that if she has to be at work at 8:00, that really means she has to have the computer on and be logged in by 8:00, so in reality, be there by 7:45 and be "at work" but not be paid for that first 15 minutes.

It's not that the problem isn't solvable, even with a different technical solution, it's just that's the way they do things. The employers don't see it as a problem, and if you aren't logged in by the time you are supposed to be working, you are "late". Rack up around 5 "lates" or so, and you are fired automatically. It's all done by computer systems behind the scenes, so if you log into the phone at 8:01, you risk being fired. All the more reason that it is really underhandedly telling employees that they must show up for work 15 or more minutes early, and that time is unpaid.

It's not just about being at work and having to reboot and go unpaid in the middle of your day, it's about the only way your boss knows you are even at work requires the computer to already be on.

It's the law.

In my state, and the state right next door where I currently work, if you are required to be there, then it's work and you must get paid. This holds for after-hours meetings, and any other reason you are required to be there.

Some employers have tried to tell people to show up 15 minutes early so they are "ready to go" when work actually starts at 8:00 (or whenever). Won't wash. If they require the employees to be there for those 15 minutes, they are required to pay the employees for those 15 minutes.

Re:15 minutes?

You've never booted from a remote disk on the other end of a slow connection, have you?

More than just Windows....

This is probably more than Windows booting up and includes the time to fire up the relevant applications (email, office, all custom apps, etc.) and the time these applications take to sync with the server which could take a while due to mass of clients connecting at the beginning of the workday.

Re:More than just Windows....

Connecting to a domain can be a wonderfully long process on poorly configured equipment.

Re:15 minutes?

It's not purely the boot time of the computer. Many places require that you open several applications in order to accomplish your assigned tasks. These can take time to load and access as well. If the system administrator(s) use the wisdom of IT to use boot time to scan drives for application and other content audits, it can take quite a while before the machine is actually usable. Same sort of thing happens at shutdown in many places.

I have had myself removed from the 'normal' network profile to avoid all that crap on my work laptop. I archive at home on the weekends (at my cost) and scan at night for malware etc. I do not need their invasive methods as I am not helpless and lazy as are the users who have forced them to resort to this kind of methodology to comply with security policies, SarBox etc.

It is more than possible that people spend 30 minutes a day waiting on routine maintenance processes that are run during bootup and shutdown.

The part I like is that I use the laptop at home, and may be actively running scripts overnight, yes for work. The 'normal' profile includes a forced reboot at 3 a.m. I have spoken quite heatedly several times to IT people about the completely asshat idea that a forced nightly reboot is required for LAPTOPS used by people traveling with the laptop.

IMO, if you are forced to be at work, and to tend to the pc, then it's payable labor.

Re:15 minutes?

How the hell does it take anyone 15 minutes to boot up their computer.

Anti Virus software (such as the bloated Symantec and Norton products) examining every single file that is accessed when a user's 1GB+ roaming profile is synchronized across a network that is already clogged to begin with is just one of many ways to cause this effect.

Re:15 minutes?

A lot of call centers don't work like that. You "punch in" when you log into your phone, but that can't happen until all the other crap the parent poster talked about is done. Basically, a lot of call centers don't consider you to be working unless your phone is active and able to take calls, which often means not getting paid for bathroom breaks, etc.

It's something that I think really needs to be addressed, because even 10 minutes a day wasted on this crap is more than a week's worth of unpaid work every year.

Re:So, automate the boot process.

Seeing as the last big company I worked for used IE6 for "security reasons", I don't think they know how to configure auto-boot.

Re:These computer must be from 1995

You can, now that Microsoft has lowered the requirement for Vista Capable...