This article is part of our 2022 Labor & Employment New Year Roundup.
Employers sometimes adopt punch rounding policies for employee time keeping in circumstances where it is difficult to determine exactly when the employee starts and stops working, to simplify the calculation of pay, and to render wage statements easier for employees to self-audit. The California Supreme Court, the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, and the United States Department of Labor all recognize that rounding time punches to the nearest five minutes, one-tenth, or quarter hour is a practical method for calculating work time and that it can be a neutral calculation tool for providing full payment to employees.
Camp v. Home Depot
Nevertheless, the California Court of Appeal for the Sixth District has ruled that an employer’s facially and statistically neutral quarter hour rounding policy and practice is not an absolute defense to a class action plaintiff’s wage claims where the employer could and did track the exact time in minutes that an employee worked each shift, and those records showed the class plaintiff was not paid for all of the time he worked.
In Camp v. Home Depot, plaintiff Camp alleged that Home Depot’s electronic timekeeping system captured each minute worked by employees, but that due to Home Depot’s quarter-hour rounding policy, employees were paid for less time than they worked. Home Depot’s records reflected that Camp was paid for 7.3 hours less than his...
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