Opinion ID: 78414
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Timekeeping

Text: An understanding of Plaintiffs' claims requires an understanding of FedEx's time-keeping procedures. FedEx employs three methods of tracking time. First, employees track their time by entering various codes corresponding to different work activities into a hand-held computerized tracking device (a tracker). Employees manually enter into the trackers their scheduled start times and end times as well as the times at which they start and finish a break. The tracker data is transmitted to FedEx's payroll database and is used to calculate employee compensation. Additionally, as a backup for the tracker data, employees manually write on a time card the time codes for each task, as well as the start and end time for that task. FedEx also requires employees to punch in and out on a manual punch clock before and after their shifts. Until 2007 the trackers did not automatically time stamp the employees' entries, so an employee who was supposed to commence work at 8:00 a.m. but arrived for work at 8:05 a.m. could hide his tardiness by entering an 8:00 a.m. start time into the tracker. Thus, FedEx claims that the manual punch records were simply used to verify the integrity of time entries that employees entered into the trackers. FedEx paid its employees only for the time between the scheduled start and end times as entered into the trackers, which did not necessarily coincide with employees' manual punch in and punch out times. The periods of time between the start/end times entered into the tracker and the punch in/out times are referred to as gap periods. Thus, if an employee punched in at 7:45 a.m. but entered a start time of 8:00 a.m. into the tracker, there would be a fifteen minute gap period for which the employee would not be paid. Additionally, FedEx required employees to take an unpaid break (the break period) during the day, but Plaintiffs claim that employees frequently worked during their breaks. Plaintiffs seek compensation for work that they performed during gap periods and break periods.