Short answer. Yes. Article 84 counts as hours worked all time during which an employee is required to be on duty or to be at a prescribed workplace. Being kept at your station is enough; the article does not ask whether there was work to do while you were there.
What the law says
Hours worked shall include (a) all time during which an employee is required to be on duty or to be at a prescribed workplace; and (b) all time during which an employee is suffered or permitted to work.
Labor Code, Article 84 — What Counts As Hours Worked. Read the full provision →
Presence under instruction is the test
Limb (a) turns on control, not on output. If you are required to be on duty or to be at a prescribed workplace, the time counts, whether the machine broke down, the stock ran out, the client cancelled or the queue simply thinned. The employer decided you should be there and available, and that decision is what the law is pricing. Idle time that arises inside a shift you were told to work is therefore paid time, and the reason for the idleness belongs to the employer.
The second limb catches informal work
Limb (b) covers all time during which an employee is suffered or permitted to work. That reaches work nobody expressly ordered but everybody knew about: the half hour before opening, the tasks finished after clocking out, the messages answered from home. Permission here can be tacit. An employer that is aware work is being done and does not stop it has permitted it, and a rule against unauthorised overtime does not undo the hours once they have been worked with the employer's knowledge.
Short breaks are inside the hours
The article adds that rest periods of short duration during working hours are counted as hours worked. Brief pauses are treated as part of the working day rather than deducted from it, which is why an employer cannot assemble a set of small breaks into an unpaid gap. This is distinct from a proper meal period, which the Code deals with separately. The distinction that matters is length and purpose: a short breather inside the shift, against a genuine break from duty.
If waiting time is being deducted
Look at how the deduction appears. Compare your actual attendance — biometric logs, gate records, shift rosters, the messages telling you when to report — against the hours credited on the payslip. Where the two differ, the difference is usually described as downtime, standby, or a break, and the label is what to question. Keep the instructions that required you to be present, since limb (a) rests on them, and note who gave them and when.