Thursday, November 20, 2008
Lawsuits Filed over PC Boot Time
Some employees want to be compensated for waiting for their computers to start.
By Kate Greene
I would have posted this earlier, but I had to restart my computer.
From the National Law Journal article titled "Is Booting Up a Computer Work, or a Work Break? More Companies Fending Off Suits on the Issue," by Tresa Baldas:
Lawyers are noting a new type of lawsuit, in which employees are suing over time spent booting [up] their computers. ... During the past year, several companies, including AT&T Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Cigna Corp., have been hit with lawsuits in which employees claimed that they were not paid for the 15- to 30-minute task of booting their computers at the start of each day and logging out at the end. Add those minutes up over a week, and hourly employees are losing some serious pay, argues plaintiffs' lawyer Mark Thierman, a Las Vegas solo practitioner who has filed a handful of computer-booting lawsuits in recent years. ...
Management-side attorney Richard Rosenblatt, a partner in the Princeton, N.J., office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius who is defending a half-dozen employers in computer-booting lawsuits ... believes that, in most cases, computer booting does not warrant being called work. Having spent time in call centers observing work behaviors, he said most employees boot the computer, then engage in nonwork activities. "They go have a smoke, talk to friends, get coffee--they're not working, and all they've done at that point is press a button to power up their computer, or enter in a key word," Rosenblatt said.
There are technical solutions to the long boot times, of course. A recent New York Times article notes that PC manufacturers are rolling out machines that give access to e-mail and Web browsers in less than 30 seconds while the rest of the machine wakes up. And we've written about a company, called Device VM, that released fast-booting software called Splashtop that helps get critical PC applications up and running in seconds.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments
gabrielg01
11/20/2008
Posts:396
A person I know once worked for a call center with a cheap server that would emit a hum when it was overworked. The data entry people were wise to this and would all rapidly hit Enter when they heard the hum. This would crash the server and give them all a half-hour break (minimum) while the server was rebooted. Management was clueless, as usual.
dmm
11/21/2008
Posts:191
So it seems that part of the debate is whether activities in preparation of work (allowing for the time it takes to push the button and start your computer) are your responsibility or the company's.
Erica Naone
11/21/2008
Posts:42
(this does not seem to apply to banks getting bailed out)
z0rr0
11/24/2008
Posts:53
The logic that the boot-up time "isn't really work" would also have to apply any time during the day that a piece of equipment fails and employees have to wait until it is back up and running. I don't think any company has been successful trying to dock employees' pay during that type of "down time".
The fact that this down time occurs first thing in the morning is irrelevant and, as someone else has pointed out, the down-time is effectively "planned"; it happens every day because management doesn't want the computers left running all night. You can't make the worker pay for that management decision.
Bruceahz
11/24/2008
Posts:17
dmm
11/21/2008
Posts:191
5017
11/24/2008
Posts:1
Then use it as a "timeclock" for everyone else, who then go boot their own machines.
MacLir
02/09/2009
Posts:9
jasonglades
03/30/2009
Posts:7
I'm certain the lawyers involved know the correct billing practices and would not even be surprised if there is precedence.
wrrock
04/21/2009
Posts:9
club penguin
hankjmatt
06/16/2009
Posts:6
gognod BeadStalk
gognod
07/02/2009
Posts:2
Bill Gassett/Framingham MA Real Estate
Framingham M...
09/25/2009
Posts:3