Thursday morning, the California Supreme Court unanimously ruled that on-call hours spent at an employee’s worksite under the employer’s control are compensable. The case, Mendiola v. CPS Security Solutions, Inc., concerned security guards and their sleep time. The security guards were required by agreement to reside in trailers owned by the employer. But the employer deducted compensation for “sleep time.” The employees remained on-call during this time, but they received no compensation for on-call time unless circumstances required that they conduct a security-related investigation.

The plaintiffs argued that under California wage and hour law, sleep time was compensable under the “control test.” The employer argued that because the IWC wage orders do not specifically speak to sleep time, the Court should import a federal regulation, 29 Code of Federal Regulation 785.23, into California law. CFR 785.23 provides that an employee who resides on his employer’s premises is not considered working all of the time he is on the premises.

The California Supreme Court rejected the employer’s argument that the federal standard should be imported into California law. It reiterated that the test for compensability under California law is the degree of control over the employee exercised by the employer. The Court concluded that the restrictions placed on the security guards while they were in the employer’s trailers were sufficient to make all the time they spent there compensable.

Takeaway: This case is important because, coming on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Integral Staffing, which determined that under federal law, time during which Amazon workers were subject to search by their employer was not compensable, the California High Court reiterates that California law is significantly more protective than federal law and requires compensation when employees are subject to their employer’s control. Some employers have argued that sleep time for firefighters could be considered non-compensable, but this decision would put to rest those arguments, at least under California law.

If you have any questions, please contact Gregg Adam at gregg@majlabor.com.