On Oct. 8, 2021, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals (which governs federal cases in Utah, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming) determined that employees at a call center had been underpaid by approximately 48 cents per shift under the Fair Labor Standards Act because they were not paid for the time expended booting up their computers and logging into the time system. Peterson v. Nelnet Diversified Sols., LLC, 15 F.4th 1033 (10th Cir. 2021).
Nelnet Diversified Solutions is a student-loan company with call centers in Colorado and Nebraska. From those call centers, Nelnet's employees "service student loans and interact with debtors over the phone and through email." The employees worked from in-office computers as part of their routine work activities. They also could not perform their job without accessing the software on the computer, as they needed information on the software to service the student loans and communicate with the debtors, which was the purpose of their job.
Significantly, the employees...
