Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, WAGE-HOUR—WORKING TIME—S.D. Ohio: Remote workers’ wage claims based on preliminary and postliminary activities fail, (Sep 5, 2025)

By Ronald Miller, J.D.

The question is whether the activities of merely turning the computer on and logging in are integral to the employees’ duties.

On an issue of first impression, a federal district court in Ohio concluded that the time spent by remote Patient Care Associates (PCAs) involved in booting up and shutting down processes for their computers were not compensable under the FLSA, except for those steps involving applications that are integral and indispensable to their principal duties. After a remote employee starts his or her computer, the activities that he or she undertakes are not automatically rendered a principal activity merely because the work computer is functioning. Rather, the court concluded that the workday starts at the moment a remote worker opens and begins operating a program or application they use as part of the principal work activities they are employed to perform. However, the employees may proceed on claims to the extent they were uncompensated for principal work (Lott v. Recker Consulting, LLC, No. 1:23-cv-489 (S.D. Ohio Sept. 4, 2025)).

Call center services. The plaintiffs in this action are Patient Care Associates (PCAs) employed by Recker Consulting and one of its subsidiaries, LYP Contact Center. Until November 2022, Recker directly employed the PCAs. But after a corporate rebranding effort, LYP took over employing the PCAs. The employers provide a call-center service for third-party healthcare providers.

PCAs served on “the front line” of providing the employer’s call center services. The parties agreed that the PCAs’ primary job duty or “main function” was to answer “inbound calls from clients’ patients.” PCAs generally handled various requests—often responding to patients’ inquiries or transferring their calls to the appropriate medical departments.

PCA assignments. Each PCA was assigned at any given time to a single client team. The daily tasks PCAs performed or the computer applications they utilized varied among PCAs, attributable to the unique needs and processes of the given client to whom that PCA was assigned. Despite the differences, the employer’s software would guide PCAs on how to handle each call.

Remote work. During the relevant time, PCAs all worked remotely, rather than in physical call centers. The employer provided them with the equipment needed to do so—a laptop, multiple monitors, keyboard, mouse, and docking station. PCAs were hourly, non-exempt employees who were expected to work forty hours per week. That included eight-hour shifts with two fifteen-minute paid breaks, along with an unpaid thirty-minute meal break. They were permitted to work overtime only with prior authorization from their managers.

Call ready. The employer required PCAs to be in a “call-ready” state at the start of their shift and at the end of the unpaid meal break. In the process of getting call ready, PCAs would start up and log into their computers, then open all the programs or applications they needed to take such calls. But getting to that call-ready state involved the PCAs undertaking various other activities first. The shift “started” for a given PCA when that PCA “clocked in,” which was accomplished by accessing the timekeeping program, either through a website on a computer or on a smartphone application.

What lies at the heart of this suit is the employer’s view that everything PCAs do before they are “ready to be able to start taking phone calls” is noncompensable time. The PCAs disagreed with that view.

Meal breaks. The employer provided the PCAs with an unpaid thirty-minute daily meal break and required PCAs to clock out before, and clock in after, that break. But the PCAs claim that the employer also required them to take actions that ate into their lunch. They alleged that the employer’s call-ready policy required that they return early from their breaks to comply.

Ending the day. Further, the PCAs alleged they were uncompensated for time spent shutting down their computers. The employer never had a company policy requiring PCAs to shut down their computer at the end of every day. PCAs could: (1) simply lock their computer screen; (2) restart their computer; or (3) shut down their computer. However, the common practice was to shut down the computer, and this practice was encouraged by supervisors.

Timekeeping. The 2022-23 handbook stated that employees should clock in no sooner than five minutes before their scheduled shift and clock out no later than seven minutes after their scheduled shift unless otherwise specified by their manager. PCAs were warned that they were “not permitted to work overtime without prior authorization.” The employer regarded “clocking in early, clocking out late or working through the scheduled lunch period” as overtime.

Under the definition of tardiness, PCAs not only needed to be signed into the phone system, but also to have loaded “all job-related software” by their scheduled shift time to avoid a tardy designation. If a PCA was tardy enough times, during a short-enough span, they could receive discipline.

Time-rounding policy. The employer’s time-rounding policy rounded clock-in and clock-out times either up or down to the nearest quarter-hour increment. Seven minutes or less was rounded down; eight minutes or more was rounded up. The employer’s analysis of the impact of the rounding policy on the named plaintiff and five opt-in plaintiffs revealed that the policy sometimes favored the employer and sometimes favored PCAs.

Off-the-clock work. On August 1, 2023, the named plaintiff initiated this case as both a collective action and a putative class action. There have been 130 opt-in plaintiffs filing consents to join. The employees allege that the employer violated the FLSA and related Ohio laws by failing to pay them for time they worked booting up and logging into their computers at the start of the day, booting up and logging in after their meal break, and shutting down their computer at the end of the day. They also allege that the employer’s time-rounding policy is unlawful under the FLSA because it violates 29 C.F.R. § 785.48(b).

At this time, the employer has filed a motion for summary judgment as to the employees’ off-the-clock-work claims, arguing that: (1) the actions PCAs took during pre-shift, meal breaks, and post-shift are not compensable activities; and (2) even if those activities were compensable, the associated time is de minimis, so it was free to disregard it. For the rounding-policy claims, the employer claimed its policy was legally permissible since it was neutral as written and in application.

Working time. With regard to the merits of the issues before the court, the court agreed with the parties that it needs to decide when the workday starts and ends for PCAs—that is whether time spent logging in and passing through digital security doors constitutes compensable activities for remote workers.

Integral and indispensable activities. This dispute concerned whether the time PCAs spend booting up and shutting down their computer is “integral and indispensable to the principal activities that [they are] employed to perform.” In this remote work setting, the court concluded that the employees’ claims partially fail to pass muster.

Engaging the computer. Here, the question is not whether a computer is integral to a PCA’s job activities—the court agreed that it is. Rather, the question is whether the activities of merely turning the computer on and logging in are integral to the employees’ duties. The court concluded that they were not. Turning on a computer and logging in merely opens up an innumerable realm of possible uses and functions for the user. Some of those activities are work-related, others are not. Activities need to be described with an appropriate level of granularity in undertaking the integral-to-the-job analysis. “Engaging the computer” falls short of the requisite level of granularity, concluded the court.

Thus, the court found that merely “engaging with” a computer is not integral to an employees’ principal activities, even if the principal activities are admittedly computer-based. Rather, turning on a computer is a preliminary activity. After a remote employee starts his or her computer, the activities that he or she undertakes are not automatically rendered a principal activity merely because the work computer is functioning.

Workday start. The court concluded that the workday starts at the moment a remote worker opens and begins operating a program or application they use as part of the principal work activities they are employed to perform. By the same token, the workday ends at the moment the employee closes out of the last such program or application. Many of the processes involved in booting up and shutting down the computer are merely preliminary or postliminary, and therefore noncompensable under the FLSA.

On the other hand, the court found that when PCAs open and begin operating any applications they primarily work in or use throughout the workday in connection with answering or handling such inbound calls, those activities are both integral and indispensable to their work. In sum, PCAs’ workdays start when they access one of the integral-and-indispensable programs or applications, including accessing the employer’s phone system, directory database, or a client’s EMR system; and their workdays correspondingly end when they close out of the last such program or application.

Accordingly, the court granted the employer’s motion for summary judgment to the extent the employees’ claims relied on preliminary and postliminary activities. However, this holding did not apply to the time the employer did not compensate PCAs for when they engaged an integral-and-indispensable program or application before clocking in (or in the case of the end of day, after clocking out).

The case is No. 1:23-cv-489.

Judge: Cole, D.

Attorneys: Anna Caplan (Barkan Meizlish DeRose Cox) for Kiara Lott. David A. Nenni (Jackson Lewis) for Recker Consulting, LLC and LYP Contact Center, LLC.

Companies: Recker Consulting, LLC; LYP Contact Center, LLC

Cases: WageHour ClassActions WorkingTime Overtime StateLawClaims OhioNews