Opinion ID: 6498779
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Exit Process

Text: California law provides no clear answer to the certified question of whether California Industrial Welfare HUERTA V. CSI ELEC. CONTRACTORS 9 Commission Wage Order No. 16 requires compensating workers for time spent on the employer’s premises in a personal vehicle, waiting to scan an identification badge, permit security guards to peer into the vehicle, and exit a Security Gate. 1 Wage Order No. 16 provides that employers must pay employees for all “hours worked,” which is defined as “the time during which an employee is subject to the control of an employer, and includes all the time the employee is suffered or permitted to work, whether or not required to do so.” Wage Order 16 §§ 2(J), 4(A). The California Supreme Court has held the two prongs are “independent factors, each of which defines whether certain time spent is compensable as ‘hours worked.’” Frlekin v. Apple, 457 P.3d 526, 531 (Cal. 2020) (quoting Morillion v. Royal Packing Co., 995 P.2d 139, 143 (Cal. 2000)). Huerta argues that this “mandatory exit security process” constitutes “hours worked” under both the “control” prong, and the “suffer or permit” prong, of Wage Order No. 16. On appeal, he specifically challenges the waiting time and security process only upon exit from, not entry to, the site. CSI refers to this time merely as “time exiting the project,” and contends the time is not compensable under the “control” prong because of the standard from Frlekin, and does not constitute hours worked under the “suffer or permit” prong due to the rule in Hernandez v. Pacific Bell Telephone Co., 239 Cal. Rptr. 3d 852, 860 (Ct. App. 2018). 1 Wage Order No. 16 regulates the wages, hours and working conditions in certain on-site occupations in the construction, drilling, logging, and mining industries. 10 HUERTA V. CSI ELEC. CONTRACTORS
The California Supreme Court in Frlekin clarified the “determinative” question for the “control” prong is the level of control, “rather than the mere fact that the employer requires the employees’ activity.” 457 P.3d at 533, 538 (quoting Morillion, 995 P.2d at 146). For “onsite employercontrolled activities,” whether the activity is required is relevant but not dispositive; courts also consider additional relevant factors “including, but not limited to, the location of the activity, the degree of the employer’s control, whether the activity primarily benefits the employee or employer, and whether the activity is enforced through disciplinary measures.” Id. at 538. But the analyses and weight given to the factors differ slightly when addressing, for example, onsite security exit processes, see id., and mandatory on-call time on the employer’s premises, see, e.g., Mendiola v. CPS Sec. Sols., Inc., 340 P.3d 355 (Cal. 2015). The analyses and weight also differ when addressing the employee’s travel time off the employer’s premises, such as travel to and from the employer’s premises on employer-mandated transportation, Morillion, 995 P.2d at 140, and travel to and from the employer’s premises on employer-provided optional transportation, Overton v. Walt Disney Co., 38 Cal. Rptr. 3d 693, 699–701 (Ct. App. 2006); Hernandez, 239 Cal. Rptr. 3d at 856–59. And no California court has addressed which iteration of the control analysis applies to time spent on the employer’s premises, in a personal vehicle, waiting for and undergoing an exit process. The Frlekin factors provide guidance, but no clear answer. Like the bag check in Frlekin, the process here was required to exit, and in both cases the process occurred on the employer’s premises and primarily benefitted the HUERTA V. CSI ELEC. CONTRACTORS 11 employer. 2 However, the disciplinary measures here were less extensive than those in Frlekin. 3 And the overall degree of control seems lower than in Frlekin, where the employer compelled workers to “perform specific and supervised tasks while awaiting and during the search,” like finding and waiting for an available manager or guard to conduct the search, opening all bags and packages and moving items inside, presenting personal technology for inspection, and “providing a personal technology card for device verification.” 457 P.3d at 531. While Huerta and his colleagues could also wait for up to twenty minutes to exit, he merely had to roll down his window and present his badge, and it is not clear that guards always looked into car windows or truck beds, or that this caused delays or required workers to take any action. California case law concerning employer control, and factors such as whether the control is exerted on or off the employer’s site, provides further guidance, but again no clear answer. The control exerted by the employers in Morillion and Mendiola—which the California Supreme 2 The Frlekin exit searches “promote[d] [the employer’s] interest in loss prevention.” 457 P.3d at 535. While CSI argues the exit process was “strictly for the purposes of ingress and egress,” the record supports that the purpose was theft prevention, and it is reasonable to infer CSI also intended to promote security and compliance with the environmental restrictions. 3 Compared to the extensive written discipline policy in Frlekin, 457 P.3d at 536, including and up to termination for failure to undergo an exit search, here workers without badges could exit by obtaining clearance from the security guard shack. While workers could be disciplined or terminated if they twice attempted to exit the Security Gate “too early at the end of the workday,” this was because early arrival indicated workers were speeding on the internal roads, and so discipline was unrelated to the exit process. 12 HUERTA V. CSI ELEC. CONTRACTORS Court deemed sufficient to require compensation—seems comparatively greater than that exerted here. In Morillion, 995 P.2d at 140–41, workers were required to travel on employer-provided buses from off-site meeting points to the employer’s premises, so the employees were off-site but under the employer’s control. In Mendiola, 340 P.3d at 357– 58, workers were restricted from leaving the premises during on-call periods and required to immediately respond to activated alarms, though not required to take other actions, so the employees were on-site and under the employer’s control (because they were on-duty and required to stay on site). The California Court of Appeal in Overton, 38 Cal. Rptr. 3d at 699–701, emphasized that the mandatory nature of the transportation was critical in making off-site travel time compensable (though Frlekin, 457 P.3d at 538, stated that the mandatory nature was a non-dispositive factor for security exit processes). In comparison, Huerta could be in his personal vehicle, but was required to go through the Security Gate to leave the job site, and was on the employer’s premises until he exited the Security Gate, which meant he was necessarily prevented from performing personal errands until he exited the Gate and left the employer’s premises. As this case contains elements of the Frlekin security process and the Morillion and Overton transportation requirements, but does not fit neatly into either set of cases, we are uncertain whether CSI exerted sufficient control over Huerta for his time spent related to the exit process to constitute “hours worked” under Wage Order No. 16. Although Huerta was required to be on-site (and under some degree of employer control) until he exited the employer’s premises, he was in his personal vehicle, and the degree of employer control was not substantial. And the consequence of any interpretation of the Wage Order could significantly HUERTA V. CSI ELEC. CONTRACTORS 13 impact employers and employees throughout California that require workers to badge into or out of worksites, buildings, parking garages, or other locations.
Huerta also argues that the time spent waiting for and undergoing the exit process was compensable as “hours worked” under the “suffer or permit” prong of Wage Order No. 16. Under California law, “an employee who is suffered or permitted to work does not have to be under the employer’s control to be compensated, provided the employer has or should have knowledge of the employee’s work.” Frlekin, 457 P.3d at 531 (first citing Morillion, 995 P.2d at 144–45; then citing Troester v. Starbucks Corp., 421 P.3d 1114 (Cal. 2018); and then citing Hernandez, 239 Cal. Rptr. 3d at 856). The “phrase ‘suffered or permitted to work, whether or not required to do so’ . . . encompasses a meaning distinct from merely ‘working.’ . . . [It] can be interpreted as time an employee is working but is not subject to an employer’s control.” Morillion, 995 P.2d at 145. And “a benefit is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for liability under the ‘suffer or permit’ standard. Instead . . . , the basis of liability is the defendant’s knowledge of and failure to prevent the work from occurring.” Martinez v. Combs, 231 P.3d 259, 282 (Cal. 2010). The California Supreme Court has never explicitly defined “work” in the phrase “suffer or permit to work” or issued an opinion that squarely addresses the question. Cf. id. at 273–74, 282 (discussing the history of the phrase and its interaction with employer control); Dynamex Ops. W. v. Super. Ct., 416 P.3d 1, 32 (Cal. 2018) (discussing how the phrase impacted the definition of independent contractor). 14 HUERTA V. CSI ELEC. CONTRACTORS The California Court of Appeal has held “the standard of ‘suffered or permitted to work’ is met when an employee is engaged in certain tasks or exertion that a manager would recognize as work. Mere transportation of tools, which does not add time or exertion to a commute, does not meet this standard.” Hernandez, 239 Cal. Rptr. 3d at 860 (quoting Taylor v. Cox Commc’ns Cal., LLC, 283 F. Supp. 3d 881, 890 (C.D. Cal. 2017)). Here, Huerta was a forklift operator, and there is no record evidence suggesting his manager would recognize driving his personal vehicle, rolling down his window, or scanning his identification badge as “work.” He does not contest these were the only required activities, but instead argues they met the legal standard because he had to literally exert himself to do so. However, the California Supreme Court has never explicitly adopted this definition and we are uncertain if it would. The answer would be dispositive here if decided in Huerta’s favor, so we respectfully certify this question.