A California class action lawsuit seeks to provide clarity on the issue of if guards should be paid for on-call “sleep time”, reports SecurityInfoWatch.com.

“As we’ve argued over and over, yeah they get to sleep for some of it, but if the alarm goes off they have to respond immediately in uniform and go check out what’s going on,” said Caraway-Howard. “That could happen at any time during this so-called sleep time. CPS has called this period of eight hours a variety of things. They’ve given it multiple labels. Sleep time is the most recent one because they latched onto this argument.”

Additionally, Caraway-Howard said that the California Supreme Court has ruled in previous cases that state wage laws prevail over federal laws that provide less rights for California workers. She said the problem with the appeals court decision is that they imported this sleep time agreement exemption from federal case law into their ruling.