Meadows v. NCR Corp., No. 21-3309 (7th Cir. 2023)
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NCR's customer engineers (CEs) service NCR devices in the field, working remotely. NCR instructed CEs to work only during their official shifts, prohibited off-the-clock work, and required CEs to record their time in an electronic system. If a CE worked overtime—contrary to NCR guidance—the CE would be paid for the time only if she recorded it. Meadows worked as a CE from 2008-2019; when he recorded unauthorized overtime, he was paid for that time. When he did not record that time, he was not compensated.
Meadows sued NCR under the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. 201, seeking compensation for his unrecorded overtime work. The district court held that Meadows’s off-the-clock activities were not part of his core responsibilities but were incidental. Under the FLSA, employers are required to compensate an employee’s performance of all principal activities but not incidental activities unless an exception applies, including if the employer elected to do so by contract or custom. The court stated that NCR could not escape liability by imposing a recording requirement on its custom of paying for incidental activities because NCR had constructive knowledge of those activities.
The Seventh Circuit reversed. The FLSA does not mandate overtime pay for the performance of incidental activities—which an employer has chosen to remunerate by custom or practice—if the employee failed to comply with requirements for payment imposed by that custom or practice.
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