Sto­ries of the hor­rid con­di­tions for work­ers in Ama­zon ware­hous­es have been trick­ling out for years: The tem­per­a­tures at the ware­hous­es vary wild­ly, with some work­ers hav­ing to work in sub-zero con­di­tions , oth­ers pass­ing out from days where the tem­per­a­ture soared above 100 degrees , work­ers cry­ing from not being able to keep up the bru­tal pace demand­ed, and then being threat­ened with ter­mi­na­tion for cry­ing . And we can now add anoth­er indig­ni­ty to the list, com­ing yes­ter­day at the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in a 9 – 0 deci­sion that it is legal for Ama­zon ware­house work­ers not to be paid for a por­tion of their workday.

At the end of long, tax­ing shifts at ware­hous­es, Ama­zon requires work­ers to go through secu­ri­ty screen­ings to ensure that no one has stolen any­thing from the ware­house. Because Ama­zon does not hire enough secu­ri­ty guards or stag­ger the quit­ting times of the work­ers, these screen­ings add an addi­tion­al 25 min­utes to each employee’s shift. These work­ers sued, argu­ing that under the Fair Labor Stan­dards Act (FLSA), the staffing com­pa­ny that hired them to work in Ama­zon ware­hous­es was required to pay them for the time spent in these secu­ri­ty checks.

Writ­ing for a unan­i­mous court in Integri­ty Staffing Solu­tions v. Busk, Jus­tice Clarence Thomas dis­agreed. (Though the work­ers work at an Ama­zon ware­house, they are hired through the inter­me­di­ary staffing com­pa­ny, Integri­ty Staffing Solutions.)

At issue was a pro­vi­sion that Con­gress placed in the Por­tal-to-Por­tal Act of 1947, which amend­ed the FLSA by exclud­ing ​“activ­i­ties which are pre­lim­i­nary to or postlim­i­nary to said prin­ci­pal activ­i­ty or activ­i­ties.” The courts have includ­ed in the def­i­n­i­tion of ​“prin­ci­pal activ­i­ties” any­thing that is ​“inte­gral and indis­pens­able” to the prin­ci­pal activ­i­ties. In oth­er words, as the 9th Cir­cuit Court of Appeals (which found in favor of the work­ers) stat­ed, the test is whether the activ­i­ty is nec­es­sary for the work being per­formed and done for the ben­e­fit of the employer.

Jus­tice Thomas dis­agreed, turn­ing to at least two dic­tio­nar­ies for clar­i­ty. Using the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary, Jus­tice Thomas found that ​“inte­gral” means ​“form­ing an intrin­sic por­tion or ele­ment, as dis­tin­guished from an adjunct or appendage.” Using Webster’s New Inter­na­tion­al Dic­tio­nary (2nd Ed.), Jus­tice Thomas found that ​“indis­pens­able” means ​“a duty that can­not be dis­pensed with, remit­ted, set aside, dis­re­gard­ed or neglect­ed.” So, he con­clud­ed, an activ­i­ty is a ​“prin­ci­pal activ­i­ty” only when it includes one that ​“is an intrin­sic ele­ment of those activ­i­ties and one with which the employ­ee can­not dis­pense if he is to per­form his prin­ci­pal activities.”

Using this tidy def­i­n­i­tion, Jus­tice Thomas explains that the work­ers are not eli­gi­ble for pay for the time they spend in the secu­ri­ty screen­ings. The screen­ings are not the prin­ci­pal activ­i­ty of Ama­zon because they were not hired to go through screen­ings, and they are not inte­gral and indis­pens­able because Ama­zon could have eas­i­ly elim­i­nat­ed the screen­ings. The Court’s argu­ment, then, is that because it is unnec­es­sary for Ama­zon to exe­cute long secu­ri­ty screen­ings to con­duct its busi­ness, it need not pay these work­ers for the required time they spend in these screenings.

By its own log­ic, the Supreme Court’s deci­sion fails. The Court dis­cussed oth­er cas­es where work­ers’ pre­lim­i­nary time was com­pens­able and tried to dis­tin­guish them. In one case, the Court held that employ­ers had to pay meat­pack­ers who had to sharp­en their knives, ​“because dull knives would slow down pro­duc­tion on the assem­bly line, affect the appear­ance of the meat as well as the qual­i­ty of the hides, cause waste and lead to accidents.”

Amazon’s ware­hous­es work off of extreme effi­cien­cy and knowl­edge of where every one of mil­lions of items are at any giv­en time. For Ama­zon, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of work­er theft would be even more dam­ag­ing to its busi­ness than most retail­ers because Ama­zon uses a sys­tem of ​“chaot­ic stor­age.” Under this sys­tem, items are not shelved in cat­e­gories, but rather in a seem­ing­ly ran­dom man­ner based on emp­ty shelve space.

If an item can­not be found using a scan­ner (as a result of a theft, for exam­ple), there is no sim­ple workaround, and Amazon’s famed effi­cien­cy would suf­fer. Ama­zon is thus con­cerned about theft not only because of the mon­e­tary loss of the stolen prod­uct, but also because theft slows down their ware­house effi­cien­cy — a cor­ner­stone of their busi­ness mod­el. So if theft is as big of a con­cern as the retail­er has alleged (and a big enough con­cern to hire secu­ri­ty guards to screen work­ers at the end of every shift), it would seri­ous­ly impair Amazon’s effi­cien­cy at least as much as dull knives would slow down meat­pack­ing productions.

Per­haps the Supreme Court’s deci­sion is unsur­pris­ing. In oppo­si­tion to these Ama­zon ware­house work­ers, who may occu­py some of the worst jobs in Amer­i­ca, was an alliance of some of the nation’s largest cor­po­ra­tions and trade groups, the Nation­al League of Cities, the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Coun­ties and the Unit­ed States Government.

This alliance of busi­ness and gov­ern­ment has now opened up the door for increased work­er abus­es and wage theft. There is noth­ing stop­ping Ama­zon and oth­er retail­ers from try­ing to save more mon­ey by lay­ing off secu­ri­ty staff that con­duct screen­ings and make the work­ers wait longer. Now, after a long day of back­break­ing labor, these work­ers may have to wait in hour-long lines for a secu­ri­ty screen­ing — a screen­ing that every­one from Jus­tice Clarence Thomas on down has agreed is inessential.