(Reuters) - Call center employees who communicated with customers exclusively via computer can seek overtime wages for the time they spent booting up the company’s machines at the start of their shifts, and logging out and shutting down at the end of it, a federal appeals court held Monday.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived the action against Customer Connexx LLC and its parent company, Las Vegas-based biotech JanOne Inc, under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

A lower-court judge had ruled for the companies last year, calling the computer log-in procedures the “electronic equivalent” of waiting in line to punch on a time clock, which is not compensable under the FLSA.

At the urging of the U.S. Labor Department, which filed an amicus brief in the case, the 9th Circuit focused instead on the fact that the computer system contained “the phone program, scripts, customer information, and email programs” that the workers were required to use on the job.

“Here, the employees’ duties cannot be performed without turning on and booting up their work computers, and having a functioning computer is necessary before employees can receive calls and schedule appointments,” Circuit Judge Jay Bybee wrote for the three-judge panel. “Accordingly, turning on the computers is integral and indispensable to the employees’ duties,” and therefore, compensable under the FLSA.

The 9th Circuit sent the case back to the U.S. District Court in Las Vegas to consider whether time...

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