Second Circuit revives supermarket workers’ waiting time wage claims

On October 13, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that waiting time is compensable under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) when an employer requires an employee to report to the worksite at a certain time to be ready to work and, for reasons beyond the employee’s control, there is no work to be done. 

Time-shaving claims

In Santos v. Lidl US, LLC, a divided panel of the Second Circuit—which hears appeals from the federal district courts in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont—considered allegations by Sandra Santos that Lidl, the supermarket chain for which she worked, required her and similarly situated employees to report to work 15 minutes before the listed start time of their store-opening shifts in the morning, and that opening managers regularly didn’t arrive until the listed start time. Because employees couldn’t clock in for work until they accessed the time clock machines located inside stores, on the days when managers weren’t there to let them in, the employees didn’t get paid for time spent waiting for managers to grant them entry.