In California, employees who are not exempt from overtime rules must be paid overtime when they work more than eight hours per day. In a recent case, employees claimed that they should have been paid overtime for the time they spent waiting for mandatory bag checks.

The class-action lawsuit was brought on behalf of 7,300 employees of Coach, the luxury handbag and accessories manufacturer. The employees worked in Coach retail stores, and they alleged that they were required to submit to a bag check every time they left the store for a rest break, meal break, or when leaving the store at the end of their work shift.

The employees alleged that waiting for the bag checks could take up to 30 minutes per day. Each time they left, they had to clock out, find a manager, request the manager do a bag check, and then have the manager escort them out. 

The time spent on bag checks cut into the employees’ time for breaks and caused them to stay longer in the stores after their shifts were over.  The lawsuit claimed that this practice violated California’s wage and hour laws because the employees should have been paid for the time spent on the bag checks, and that for full-time employees, the pay should have been overtime pay.

The judge, in denying Coach’s motion to dismiss the case, found that 30 minutes per day was a significant amount of time. Rather than go to trial, Coach settled the lawsuit for $1.75 million.

Please contact us for more information on California overtime requirements or other aspects of Employment Law.