Lidl Workers Were Told to Arrive Early Without Pay.

At 4:45 in the morning, a store-opening shift can already be underway in every practical sense: workers have been told to report, they are at the workplace, and they are ready to begin. But if the doors are locked and the manager with the keys has not arrived, the time clock inside is out of reach. The workday, at least on the payroll, may not have started.

That is the problem Sandra Santos says she faced while working as a clerk and stocker at Lidl grocery stores in West Babylon, New York. According to her complaint, Lidl required her and other opening-shift employees to arrive 15 minutes before their listed start time. Opening managers, however, regularly arrived at the listed start time or later. When workers had to wait outside for entry, Santos says, they couldn’t clock in and thusly weren’t paid for the wait.

These figures describe allegations and background facts recited by the court, not findings that Lidl violated wage law.

The unpaid minutes began before the doors opened

Santos worked for Lidl from about July through November 2021. She spent her first six weeks training at a store on Sunrise Highway, then worked at another West Babylon location on Montauk Highway. Her scheduled opening shift was 5 a.m. to 3 p.m., four days a week, for a total of 40 hours. Her hourly wage was $16.50.

The alleged mismatch was simple. Lidl required employees to report at 4:45 a.m., but workers could not access the time clocks until someone opened the store. Santos alleged that managers were late about once a week. On those occasions, employees were already at the workplace as instructed, but were stuck waiting for the person who could let them in.

Santos says the delay cost her 15 minutes of wages each week of her employment. For five of those weeks, the unpaid time was payable as overtime. The opinion does not calculate a final amount due, and it does not establish the total amount that might be owed to other employees. Those questions remain open.

Why a quarter-hour can become a wage dispute

Federal wage law generally requires covered employers to pay minimum wage and overtime compensation for qualifying work. But Congress’s 1947 Portal-to-Portal Act excludes some activities before or after an employee’s principal work, such as certain preliminary and postliminary tasks. Lidl argued that Santos’s wait outside the store fell on the noncompensable side of that line.

The appeals court said the distinction cannot be resolved simply by calling the time “preliminary.” Department of Labor regulations distinguish between an employee who voluntarily arrives early and waits to be put to work, and one whom the employer requires to report at a particular time, ready to work, even though circumstances outside the employee’s control prevent work from beginning.

“The difference in the two situations is that in the second the employee was engaged to wait while in the first the employee waited to be engaged.” U.S. Department of Labor regulation quoted by the Second Circuit, 29 C.F.R. § 790.7(h)

Put plainly, the question is not only whether the worker was doing a task with their hands. It is whether the employer required the worker to be present and ready at a particular time, while the employer’s own arrangements prevented work from starting. The court concluded that Santos had plausibly alleged that kind of situation.

The majority also rejected Lidl’s argument that the “engaged to wait” principle applies only to traditional on-call jobs, such as firefighters waiting for an emergency. The regulation’s language, the court said, does not limit it to those occupations. It can potentially apply to a grocery-store employee required to arrive ready for work but unable to enter for reasons beyond her control.

The court did not accept every argument from Santos

Lidl argued that Santos could use the time outside the store for herself, such as reading the news or paying bills online, or simply leave the parking lot. It also argued that the alleged intervals were too brief and infrequent to support a claim under the legal doctrine known as de minimis, which can excuse very small amounts of time when recording them would be impractical.

A sharp disagreement inside the court

Judge Richard J. Sullivan dissented. In his view, Santos’s wait occurred before her scheduled shift and was not an integral or indispensable part of stocking shelves or helping customers. He read Supreme Court precedent as setting a higher bar for compensable work and argued that the waiting-time regulation should not convert ordinary pre-shift waiting into paid time simply because the employer required an early arrival.

The majority saw the facts differently at the dismissal stage. Santos alleged that she had no option to arrive only at 5 a.m.; she was required to be there at 4:45 and sometimes could not get inside until the scheduled start. The majority reasoned that, if those allegations are true, the case fits the regulation’s category of an employee “engaged to wait.” The disagreement is about how wage law applies to these alleged facts, not a factual finding that one side has already proved its account.

What the ruling changes for workers

For Santos, the immediate consequence is that her wage claims can continue rather than ending before evidence is tested. She seeks unpaid wages, including overtime where appropriate, and also seeks to pursue the federal claim on behalf of similarly situated non-exempt opening-shift employees and the New York claim as a putative class action.

Those group claims have not been certified. The appeals court’s decision also does not establish that every Lidl store had the same practice, that every opening manager arrived late, or that any particular amount is owed. Those are matters for further proceedings and evidence.

The broader workplace issue is narrower, but practical: payroll systems often record time only after an employee can access a clock or another timekeeping method. If a worker is required to arrive early but cannot enter the workplace because a manager has not opened it, the recorded start time may not capture all the time the employer required the worker to spend there. Whether that interval must be paid depends on the governing law and the actual circumstances, not simply on whether the clock registered it.

The opinion does not establish how many workers, if any beyond Santos, experienced the alleged delays. It does, however, leave room for workers to argue that an employer cannot require readiness at one time and automatically treat employer-caused waiting as unpaid merely because the formal shift begins later.

What happens next

Primary source: Santos v. Lidl US, LLC, No. 25-2357, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, decided October 13, 2026. The majority opinion vacated dismissal of the FLSA and New York Labor Law time-shaving claims and remanded for further proceedings; Judge Richard J. Sullivan dissented.