Amazon.com Faces Lawsuit over Overtime Pay

Seattle, WAWarehouse employees working for online book distributer Amazon.com have recently filed a lawsuit against the retailer, alleging that it has reduced the overtime pay of more than 21,000 workers across the country.

span itemprop="image" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/ImageObject" style="display:block">Company policy has managers rounding start and end times for shifts to the nearest quarter hour, which the lawsuit claims has cost workers up to 15 minutes of overtime pay daily even during company mandated overtime.

"You're in the technology business. Use it," says Reno-based Lawyer Mark Thierman in the National Law Journal. "You can do this to the second. There's no need for this. These people punch in on an electronic clock."

The practice of rounding off time worked has been challenged before. In Nevada, a prominent casino chain is facing a potential class action suit from 10,000 employees who claim that shift rounding cost them substantially, and similar cases have risen in Michigan and New Jersey as well.

Rounding is legal under US labor law as long as it fairly and accurately compensates workers for the time they put in at the job.