Yelp Slapped with California Wage Lawsuit

But really, is the two to five minutes that it reportedly takes to log into Yelp computers such a big deal?

Wages due for the time the employer controls

Under the California Labor Code and Industrial Welfare Commission (IWC) Wage Orders, employers are required to pay workers for all hours worked. This includes any time that employees are under the employer’s control or are permitted to work, regardless of whether the time is recorded or authorized in advance and regardless of whether the unpaid time is short.

It includes waiting time or the time during which workers are on call. It includes time when overnight, on-premises workers (think security personnel), are permitted to sleep. It also includes on-premises downtime (imagine broken machinery or a delayed delivery) if the employee must remain ready to work.

In California, even tiny increments of time (the minutes it takes to check emails or take a call after hours) if it is done at the employer’s direction, must be paid. Remember that wage workers are selling the control of their time – time during which they cannot pursue other work or goals.

So, yes. Two to five minutes is a big deal, especially when it’s every day for every wage earner working for a giant employer like Yelp. Under California labor law, it’s wage theft.

An explosion of booting-up time lawsuits

Recent months have witnessed a flurry of “boot-up” lawsuits, in which hourly employees allege that their employers failed to pay them for the time spent turning on work computers, loading software, and logging into systems before clocking in. The key issue is whether computer start-up activities are “integral and indispensable” to an employee’s main job duties. Courts have generally found that if a worker’s job requires a computer, booting up the system is an essential activity and must be compensated.

Some of these lawsuits, like Cuervo, focus on the provisions of the California Labor Code. Others focus on the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). There are subtle differences between the two but, in general, California wage and hour law is more protective of workers’ rights than federal law.

In October 2025, Bank of America workers filed a proposed class action lawsuit under the FLSA over unpaid “PC boot-up time” and system loading delays. In Martin v. Bank of America, workers alleged that they regularly performed off-the-clock work, including computer startup and shutdown tasks, and were not compensated for that time. The case ultimately settled.

In 2024, in Cadena v. Customer Connexx LLC, the Ninth Circuit reached the same position when interpreting the FLSA. Other federal circuits have disagreed, however, especially when the time involved was so brief as to be impossible to measure by the employer’s time keeping system.

Federal hair-splitting

In 1946 the U.S. Supreme Court adopted a “de minimus”exception to the FLSA compensable hours rule when the unpaid time was only a few seconds or minutes. This is the root of the problem.

However, courts have increasingly struck down this defense especially when interpreting state law, noting that these daily minutes add up to significant unpaid wages.

The decision in Cadena followed a similar decision by the Tenth Circuit in 2021 in Peterson v. Nelnet Diversified Solutions, LLC. With the Cadena decision, the de minimus rule is beginning to look decisively dead in California.

What to do if you are not being paid for boot-up time

If you are required to boot up a computer or log into a secure work portal before you can officially clock in, California labor laws require that this waiting period be counted toward your total hours worked.

If your employer’s time-tracking systems do not account for this pre-shift computer wait time, it may constitute a wage violation. This may be the time to consult the California Department of Industrial Relations or legal counsel to explore a California labor lawsuit.