Bank of America sued over not paying staff for PC boot up time in proposed class motion lawsuit

Bank of America is dealing with a proposed class and collective motion lawsuit that accuses the corporate of failing to pay a whole lot of hourly staff for time spent booting their computer systems, logging in, and launching required software program earlier than formally beginning their shifts.

The grievance, filed by former worker Tava Martin, focuses on a routine acquainted to many within the trendy office: unlocking encrypted drives, signing in by way of multi-factor authentication, connecting to a VPN, and launching business-critical functions. According to the submitting, these duties might take as much as half-hour every day and had been required earlier than staff might entry the corporate’s timekeeping system to clock in.

This might take even longer if technical issues occurred, and through unpaid lunch breaks, many programs would robotically disconnect, forcing staff to repeat elements of this protracted login course of, including roughly three to 5 minutes of unpaid time on most days. At the top of every shift, staff needed to sign off of all packages and securely shut down their workstations, including one other two to a few minutes.

The lawsuit leans on long-standing steering from the U.S. Department of Labor, which in 2008 clarified that such pc start-up duties might be thought-about compensable beneath the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) if it was integral to the staff’ actions. Specifically, the company handled booting and preparing workstations as part of a worker’s “first principal activity” if those tasks are necessary to perform the job. In this case, the plaintiff argues that launching the company’s digital workspace was a prerequisite for fulfilling the analyst role and that Bank of America should have compensated that time.

Martin’s legal team is seeking back pay and damages for a class they estimate includes “hundreds” of similarly situated business analysts and support staff who were required to use BofA’s remote access tools before logging work hours. The plaintiffs are reportedly pursuing both class and collective action status, which would allow them to represent a broader group of affected employees across states.

Recent court rulings on similar cases have varied. In some cases, pre-login time has been found non-compensable, especially when workers were able to perform other duties while their computers booted. Others have sided with employees where specific boot-up sequences were clearly tied to core job functions and could not be bypassed.

At the time of writing, Bank of America has not responded publicly to the filing. The case, Martin v. Bank of America, was filed in federal court on October 23 and remains at the preliminary stage.

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