End of an era? Time rounding a thing of the past

We have visited the issue of employee electronic timekeeping and the notion of time rounding a few times now in our ongoing efforts to keep you apprised of the latest news in employment law.  Time rounding is the method of logging employee work time to the nearest tenth or quarter of an hour.  It appears now that California courts are heralding the end of this common practice particularly given rapid developments in technology.

In the latest knockout punch, the Fourth District Court of Appeal in Woodworth v. Loma Linda Univ. Medical Center (Cal. Ct. App., July 24, 2023, No. E072704), held that where an employer “can capture and has captured the exact amount of time an employee has worked during a shift, the employer must pay the employee for ‘all the time’ worked.”  The Woodworth court thus agreed with the more recent holding in Camp v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc. (2022) 84 Cal.App.5th 638.  This has now seemingly brought to an end the employer practice based on federal standards and validated by earlier California case law such as See’s Candy Shops, Inc. v. Superior Court (2012) 210 Cal.App.4th 889, where rounding time entries was viewed as permissible so long as the calculation was facially neutral and applied “‘in such a manner that it will not result, over a period of time, in failure to compensate the employees properly for all the time they have actually worked.”

Interestingly, time rounding has not been specifically codified into California law and the courts have therefore taken the reins in growing this body of law through its evolving case law.  We await the California Supreme Court’s final word in this area.  Also, now that the courts have all but extinguished the notion of time rounding, it remains to be seen whether the Legislature will step in and finally put an end to the saga statutorily. 

In the meantime, what should employers do to ensure the utmost compliance? If your workplace uses time clocks that can record start and end times to shifts and meal and rest breaks, then it would be wise to implement a system as soon as possible where employees are paid for their entire work shift without the use of rounding.  Rosasco Law Group monitors developments in all areas of employment law, and we will alert our readers of the latest on this front.  Please contact our office with any questions you may have on timekeeping in the workplace.