Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co.

Last updated
Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co.
Seal of the United States Supreme Court.svg
Argued January 29, 1946
Decided June 10, 1946
Full case nameAnderson, et al. v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co.
Citations328 U.S. 680 ( more )
66 S. Ct. 1187; 90 L. Ed. 1515; 1946 U.S. LEXIS 3065; 11 Lab. Cas. (CCH) ¶ 51,233
Case history
PriorAnderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 60 F. Supp. 146 (E.D. Mich. 1943); reversed, Mt. Clemens Pottery Co. v. Anderson, 149 F.2d 461 (6th Cir. 1945); cert. granted, 326 U.S. 706(1945).
SubsequentPetition for rehearing denied, 329 U.S. 822(1946).
Holding
Preliminary work activities, if controlled by the employer and performed entirely for the employer's benefit, are properly included in the statutory workweek under Fair Labor Standards Act.
Court membership
Chief Justice
vacant
Associate Justices
Hugo Black  · Stanley F. Reed
Felix Frankfurter  · William O. Douglas
Frank Murphy  · Robert H. Jackson
Wiley B. Rutledge  · Harold H. Burton
Case opinions
MajorityMurphy, joined by Black, Reed, Douglas, Rutledge
DissentBurton, joined by Frankfurter
Jackson took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
Fair Labor Standards Act
Abrogated by
Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947

Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680 (1946), is a decision by the US Supreme Court that held that preliminary work activities, if controlled by the employer and performed entirely for the employer's benefit, are properly included as working time under Fair Labor Standards Act. [1] The decision is known as the "portal to portal case."

Contents

The Supreme Court reaffirmed Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery in its 2016 ruling in Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo , No. 14-1146 (March 22, 2016).

Background

The United States Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in 1938. Section 7(a) of the Act defined working time, and required employers to pay overtime wages under certain circumstances. Section 11(c) of the Act requires employers to keep accurate records regarding time on the job. Section 16(b) of the Act enables employees to sue to recover lost wages.

About 1,200 workers at the Mt. Clemens Pottery Co. facility in Mount Clemens, Michigan, were employed at a large, 8-acre (32,000 m2) facility. The plant was nearly a quarter-mile in length. The employees' entrance was in the northeast corner.

Employees were given 14 minutes between each shift to punch the time clock, walk to their respective workbench and prepare for work. It took a minimum of eight minutes for all the employees to get by the time clock. The estimated walking time for employees ranged from 30 seconds to three minutes, but some workers needed as many as eight minutes to reach their workbenches. Upon arriving at their workbench, employees were required to put on aprons or overalls, removed shirts, tape or grease arms, put on finger cots, prepare equipment, turn on switches, open windows, and/or assemble or sharpen tools. Such preparatory activities consumed three to four minutes.

Working time was calculated by the employer based on the time cards punched by the clocks. The employer deducted walking and preparatory time from the time cards based on the punched time and assumptions about how long prep work and walking would take on average.

Seven employees and their labor union (represented by Edward Lamb) brought a class action suit under Section 16(b) of the FLSA alleging that the employer's calculations did not accurately reflect the time actually worked and that they were deprived of the proper amount of overtime compensation.

Special master's findings

The district court appointed a special master to investigate the case. The special master recommended that the case be dismissed because the employees did not establish by a preponderance of evidence a violation of the Act. The special master concluded that walking time was not traditionally held to be compensable working time in the industry, that the employees had produced no reliable evidence to determine how much time they had lost, and that the employees had not shown that they were forced to wait until starting time.

District court's ruling

The district court agreed, with one exception. The court found that the vast majority of employees were ready for work approximately five minutes before the start of work and that it seemed unreasonable that employees would not begin work as they were paid by piece rate. [2] The court fashioned a formula for computing which employees were forced to wait. The district court then entered a judgment against Mt. Clemens Pottery Co. in the amount of $2,415.74.

Court of appeals' ruling

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court in part, and overruled the district court in part. [3] The court of appeals upheld the district court and special master by concluding that the employees' claims were not supported by the evidence. However, the court of appeals ruled the district court had erred by assuming that work would begin before the official start of working time. The court of appeals further held that the burden rested upon the employees to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that they did not receive the wages to which they were entitled.

The workers appealed to the Supreme Court, which granted certiorari.

Holding

Justice Frank Murphy issued the opinion of the Court. [4] The majority held that the court of appeals and the special master had imposed an improper standard of proof on the employees. Section 11(c) of the Act imposed upon the employer, not the worker, the duty to keep proper records of wages, hours and other conditions and practices of employment. Where the employer has failed to keep accurate or adequate records, Justice Murphy argued, the law does not deny recovery on the ground that the employee is unable to prove the precise extent of uncompensated work. Such a ruling, Murphy noted, would create a strong disincentive for employers to keep any records at all and shift the burden back onto the employee. Thus, Murphy concluded that "an employee has carried out his burden if he proves that he has in fact performed work for which he was improperly compensated and if he produces sufficient evidence to show the amount and extent of that work as a matter of just and reasonable inference." [5]

The employer may rebut such claims by producing accurate and adequate records that document the actual work performed. In the absence of such rebutting evidence, the court may award damages to the employee, even though the award is only approximate.

Justice Murphy subsequently turned to the facts of the case. On the basis of the factual record, which proved decisive in the case, the court found that work had, in fact, begun and ended at the scheduled hours and that the employees had no basis for a claim in this regard. The court did not find that the time clock evidence was reliable. "[Time] clocks do not necessarily record the actual time worked by employees," Murphy wrote. [6] Since it took eight minutes for an entire shift to punch in, it would be unfair to credit the first worker in line for eight minutes of work, and the time clocks did not show the time at which employees were compelled to be on the premises or at their workbenches.

But the majority held that the employer required workers to be on the premises prior and subsequent to the scheduled working hours. Some of this time was clearly spent on work such as preparatory activities such as putting on aprons, sharpening tools and turning on machinery.

Murphy dismissed arguments against vagueness in determining the compensatory award by advocating a de minimis approach. Did the district court need to determine, down to the second, how much time was spent working? He thought not: "Split-second absurdities are not justified by the actualities of working conditions or by the policy of the Fair Labor Standards Act." [7] Murphy reasoned, however, that the evidence clearly showed that workers did spend a "substantial measure" of time engaged in prep work. This time could be gauged under a de minimis rule, and a satisfactory award fashioned.

The majority remanded the case to the district court and ordered that the court determine how much time (on average) was spent walking and how much time doing preparatory activities and to fashion an award based only the amount of time engaged in preparatory activity.

Dissent

Justice Harold Hitz Burton dissented, joined by Justice Felix Frankfurter. Justice Burton argued that Rule 53(e)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure required the court to accept the special master's findings of fact unless clearly erroneous. Burton pointed out that the majority had accepted the special master's findings of fact. How, then, could the court reject the master's findings regarding prep time?

Burton also observed that, under the majority's de minimis rule, the employees would receive no award. Burton noted that employees had admitted that as little as one minute was spent in preparatory work. Under the de minimis rule, almost no workers had a claim.

Burton also argued that Congress had never intended to redefine the term "workweek" in the Act. Preparatory work was customarily not paid overtime but included in the rate of pay, Burton said. But the majority's ruling rested in a radical redefinition of the term "workweek," Burton claimed.

There is no evidence that Congress meant to redefine this common term and to set aside long established contracts or customs which had absorbed in the rate of pay of the respective jobs recognition of whatever preliminary activities might be required of the worker by that particular job.... "Workweek" is a simple term used by Congress in accordance with the common understanding of it. For this Court to include in it items that have been customarily and generally absorbed in the rate of pay but excluded from measured working time is not justified in the absence of affirmative legislative action. [8]

Burton would have affirmed the judgment of the court of appeals.

Aftermath

In 1947, Congress enacted the Portal to Portal Act of 1947 to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act in light of the court's ruling in Anderson v. Mt Clemens Pottery Co. The word "portal" refers to the workplace door, so "Portal-to-Portal" could be interpreted to mean that all time spent within that door is work time. However, Section 4 of the 1947 Act required that the determination of whether time spent in preliminary or postliminary activities was "work" under the FLSA was to be based solely on contract, custom, or practice.

Unfortunately, the Portal-to-Portal Act was equally unclear as to what constituted contract, custom or practice. The Supreme Court attempted to clarify the issue in Steiner v. Mitchell, 350 U.S. 247 (1956), by ruling that activities which were "integral" to work (such as the donning of protective clothing) were compensable under the FLSA and Portal-to-Portal Act.

Nearly 50 years later, the Court again revisited the issue of what constituted "work." In IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, [9] the Court again engaged in a fact-specific analysis to conclude that time spent waiting while in protective gear, or time spent walking in protective gear, was compensable working time.

The Supreme Court reaffirmed Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery in its 2016 ruling in Tyson Foods v. Bouaphakeo , No. 14-1146 (March 22, 2016). Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the 6-to-2 majority, quoted from Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery in affirming the right of pork processing plant workers in using statistics to support their back-wage claims for time spent in donning protective clothing and equipment while at work. [10]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680 (1946). PD-icon.svg This article incorporates public domain material from this U.S government document.
  2. ↑ Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 60F. Supp.146 ( E.D. Mich. 1943).
  3. ↑ Mt. Clemens Pottery Co. v. Anderson, 149F.2d461 ( 6th Cir. 1945).
  4. ↑ Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone died on April 22, 1946. He had participated in oral argument, but his death precluded participation in a decision. Stone's successor, Fred M. Vinson, would not be confirmed as Chief Justice until June 20, 1946. With Justice Jackson not participating in the case, the final vote for the majority was 5-2.
  5. ↑ Anderson, 328 U.S. at 687.
  6. ↑ Anderson, 328 U.S. at 690.
  7. ↑ Anderson, 328 U.S. at 692.
  8. ↑ Anderson, 328 U.S. at 697-98 (Burton, J., dissenting).
  9. ↑ IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez , 546 U.S. 21 (2005).
  10. ↑ Liptak, Adam (March 22, 2016). "Supreme Court Upholds Worker Class-Action Suit Against Tyson". The New York Times. Retrieved March 22, 2016.

Related Research Articles

Overtime is the amount of time someone works beyond normal working hours. The term is also used for the pay received for this time. Normal hours may be determined in several ways:

A union shop, also known as a post-entry closed shop, is a form of a union security clause. Under this, the employer agrees to either only hire labor union members or to require that any new employees who are not already union members become members within a certain amount of time. Use of the union shop varies widely from nation to nation, depending on the level of protection given trade unions in general.

United States labor law The rights of working people in USA to wages, limits on working time, voice at work, equal treatment, and job security.

United States labor law sets the rights and duties for employees, labor unions, and employers in the United States. Labor law's basic aim is to remedy the "inequality of bargaining power" between employees and employers, especially employers "organized in the corporate or other forms of ownership association". Over the 20th century, federal law created minimum social and economic rights, and encouraged state laws to go beyond the minimum to favor employees. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 requires a federal minimum wage, currently $7.25 but higher in 28 states, and discourages working weeks over 40 hours through time-and-a-half overtime pay. There are no federal or state laws requiring paid holidays or paid family leave: the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 creates a limited right to 12 weeks of unpaid leave in larger employers. There is no automatic right to an occupational pension beyond federally guaranteed social security, but the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 requires standards of prudent management and good governance if employers agree to provide pensions, health plans or other benefits. The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 requires employees have a safe system of work.

National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833 (1976), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Fair Labor Standards Act could not constitutionally be applied to state governments. The decision was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority.

Edward Lamb was an American businessman, broadcasting executive and labor lawyer. He is best known for having defended striking workers during the Auto-Lite Strike in 1934 and for successfully resisting the federal government's attempt to strip him of his broadcasting licenses during the McCarthy era.

Jewell Ridge Coal Corp. v. United Mine Workers of America, 325 U.S. 161 (1945), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States dealing with the compensation of mine workers for time spent traveling to work sites while underground.

Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 United States wage law

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 29 U.S.C. § 203 (FLSA) is a United States labor law that creates the right to a minimum wage, and "time-and-a-half" overtime pay when people work over forty hours a week. It also prohibits employment of minors in "oppressive child labor". It applies to employees engaged in interstate commerce or employed by an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, unless the employer can claim an exemption from coverage.

Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S. 528 (1985), is a United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court held that the Congress has the power under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to extend the Fair Labor Standards Act, which requires that employers provide minimum wage and overtime pay to their employees, to state and local governments. In this case, the Court overruled its previous decision in National League of Cities v. Usery, in which the Court had held that regulation of the activities of state and local governments "in areas of traditional governmental functions" would violate the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134 (1944), is a United States Supreme Court decision holding that an administrative agency's interpretative rules deserve deference according to their persuasiveness. The court adopted a case-by-case test, which considers the rulings, interpretations, and opinions of the administrator. The Supreme Court reversed and remanded the case for further proceedings.

Christensen v. Harris County, 529 U.S. 576 (2000), is a Supreme Court of the United States case holding that a county's policy of requiring employees to schedule time off to avoid accruing time off was not prohibited by the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Co. v. Muscoda Local No. 123, 321 U.S. 590 (1944), was an important decision of the United States Supreme Court with regard to the interpretation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). This set a precedent for an expansive construction of the language of the FLSA.

IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U.S. 21 (2005), is a US labor law case of the a United States Supreme Court, interpreting the Federal Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938, as amended by the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947.

Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., 567 U.S. 142 (2012), is a US labor law case of the United States Supreme Court. It held that pharmaceutical sales representatives were not eligible for overtime pay. The court ruled in a majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito that sales representatives were classified as "outside salesmen" who are exempt from the Department of Labor's regulations regarding overtime pay.

Genesis HealthCare Corp. v. Symczyk, 569 U.S. 66 (2013), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court dealing with the justiciability doctrine of mootness.

Harris v. Quinn, 573 U.S. ___ (2014), is a US labor law case of the United States Supreme Court regarding provisions of Illinois state law that allowed a union security agreement. Since the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 prohibited the closed shop, states could still choose whether to allow unions to collect fees from non-union members since the collective agreements with the employer would still benefit non-union members. The Court decided 5–4 that Illinois's Public Labor Relations Act, which permitted the union security agreements, violated the First Amendment. A similar case was decided in 2018 called Janus v AFSCME.

Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk, 574 U.S. ___ (2014), was a unanimous decision by the United States Supreme Court, ruling that time spent by workers waiting to undergo anti-employee theft security screenings is not "integral and indispensable" to their work, and thus not compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The Court delivered their ruling on December 9, 2014.

Young v. United Parcel Service, 575 U.S. ___ (2015), is a United States Supreme Court case that the Court evaluated the requirements for bringing a disparate treatment claim under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. In a 6-3 decision, the Court held that to bring such a claim, a pregnant employee must show that their employer refused to provide accommodations and that the employer later provided accommodations to other employees with similar restrictions. The Court then remanded the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to determine whether the employer engaged in discrimination under this new test.

Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo, 577 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court affirmed the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which held that representative evidence could be used to support the claims of the class. The case arose as a class action lawsuit against Tyson Foods. The Supreme Court affirmed the Eighth Circuit's judgment that the class satisfied the predominance requirement of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure's Rule 23 and that the use of representative evidence was allowable in this case. It has been cited by lower courts and has spawned significant academic discussion.

Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States on how two federal laws, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), relate to whether employment contracts can legally bar employees from collective arbitration. The Supreme Court had consolidated three cases, Epic Systems Corp. v Lewis, Ernst & Young LLP v. Morris (16-300), and National Labor Relations Board v. Murphy Oil USA, Inc. (16-307). In a 5-4 decision issued in May 2018, the Court ruled that arbitration agreements requiring individual arbitration are enforceable under the FAA, regardless of allowances set out within the NLRA.

References

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.