Security Workers’ $90M On-Call Rest Breaks Settlement Upheld

A California Supreme Court reinstated a nearly $90 million award recently supporting a class of security guards who say that their on-call rest breaks were unlawful.

ABM Security Services allegedly required their security guards to carry radios and stay “on-call” during their rest breaks. The class notes that these on-call rest breaks were against the law.

In 2005, lead plaintiff Jennifer Augustus filed the original suit claiming that AMB’s policy to carry their radios when they were on breaks was in violation of California labor code.

Essentially, if an employee is on-call, he or she is not on a break, according to California labor law.

Approximately 14,000 guards were awarded nearly $90 million by a lower court for their on-call rest breaks, but an appeals court reversed the decision.

The guards brought their case to the California Supreme Court where the majority opinion from Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuellar agreed with the guards.

According to state law and the Industrial Welfare Commission’s Wage Order 4, it prohibits on-call rest breaks. The Supreme Court upheld the trial court’s decision.

The court said, “California law requires employers to relieve their employees of all work­-related duties and employer control during 10-­minute rest periods. A rest period, in short, must be a period of rest.”

Several justices agreed with Judge Cuellar’s opinion.

Justice Leondra Kruger both concurred and dissented saying, “Thus, while I agree with the majority that an employer must relieve employees of their duties during rest breaks, I see no adequate basis for upholding a $90 million judgment that was premised on the incorrect assumption that a person who is ‘on call’ — that is, who has been required to carry a radio, pager, or phone, or to otherwise remain reachable in case of emergency — is necessarily also ‘on duty.’”

This $90 million dollar settlement for their on-call rest breaks was awarded to the security guards back in July 2012 on summary judgment.

ABM appealed this decision and argued that this “defies law and reason” and if upheld, the ruling would require companies to force employees to take their rest breaks off of their work sites without their personal cell phones.

In December 2014, the appeals court vacated the award. They said that that being on call does not mean that an employee is performing work in violation of the rest break law.

The Supreme Court recently ruled that state law requires that “employers relinquish any control over how employees spend their break time, and relieve their employees of all duties – including the obligation that an employee remain on call.”

The majority opinion said that on-call rest breaks were unfair, noting that one cannot require employees to remain at the ready at all times, even on their rest breaks.

One of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs said, “ABM’s policy requiring guards, without pay, to remain vigilant and watchful at all times runs counter to California laws permitting 10­-minute, duty-­free rest breaks.”

The ABM Security Services On-Call Rest Break Class Action Lawsuit is Jennifer Augustus et al. v. ABM Security Services Inc., Case No. S224853 in the Supreme Court of California.

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