So you think a corporation should be able to require you to do "work" without compensation?
They are not being required to do any work at all (with or without compensation).
It is a matter of loss-prevention - Amazon, etc. are not making any profits from this policy.
I think if you don't like your employer's policies, then you should quit if they won't change them.
(And if quitting over such things isn't "worth it" to you, well, then, there you go ...)
Also - what has "a corporation" got to do with it? "A corporation" as opposed to what?
A "mom and pop" outfit that did the same kind of thing?
Would that somehow make it "any better" or "more acceptable?"
After all whose bottom line is being protected by the security search.
... 'coz to hell with bottom lines.
It's not like bottom lines have anything to do with why employers even exist in the first place.
Apparently, the only purpose of employers is to service the wants & needs of their employees ...
This grotesquely over-simplistic "employers vs. employees" mode of analysis - where it is somehow automatically a "bad thing" for employers (or "corporations") to protect their "bottom lines" - is just more of the Manichean "us vs. them" BS that is used to keep people divided and bickering.
As for travel, you have the ability to live as close as you'd like to the building you work. Heck get a tent and sleep right outside the security fence.
Amazon, and all other companies owe the workers for that time.
Double-standard, much? As previously noted, you also have the ability to quit. And for a lot of jobs (perhaps even most), quitting and finding another more amenable job is probably a much more viable option than moving closer to work (not to mention such ridiculous nonsense as "tenting outside the security fence"). And then there's the whole matter of how you move closer to work if you're employed by a temp agency ...
You can dance around it all you like, but if it is justifiable to force employers to pay employees for time spent on things like this, then it is
every bit as justifiable to force them to pay employess for the time & expenses involved in commuting to & from work. You can have it one way, or you can have it the other way - but you don't get to have it
both ways.
I wouldn't dream of asking one of our employees to work for free, nor would I have done it when I was an hourly employee. In fact I fought the law and the law lost at my first job when I was 16 or 17 or something like that. The restaurant wanted to hold mandatory meetings for the entire staff (unpaid). I clocked in when I came in. They found out. I told them I would not be getting ready for work, driving to town, listening to them for an hour and not be paid for atleast the time I was present at the meeting. They changed their policy after that....and held less and more productive meetings.
Seeing as how no courts were involved in your little anecdote, it only goes to support my point.
If these unpaid-for loss-prevention security procedures are not a violation of anyone's contractual terms of employment, then NO ONE'S rights are being abused - and the government has NO business being involved in this dispute.
