Case ID: us-ct-cl_28/html/0555-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice Blatchbord", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

AARON S. POST v. THE UNITED STATES.
    (27 C. Cls. R., 245; 148 U. S. R., 124.)
    
      On the defendants' Appeal.
    
    Letter-carriers receive annual salaries and are entitled by statute to leave of absence without loss of pay. The Post-Office Regulations provide that “during the intervals between their trips they may be employed in the post-office in such manner as the postmaster may direct, but not as clerics;” and the Revised Statutes (§ 1764), that “no allowance or compensation shall be made for any extra service whatever.” Such being the law, Congress enact “that hereafter eight hours shall constitute a day’s work for letter-carriers,” and that if a carrier “is employed a greater number of hours per day than eight, he shall be paid extra for the same in proportion to the salary now fixed by laxo.” In New York the carriers are employed in their proper work more than eight hours on week days but less on Sundays, the average per month not exceeding eight per day. In Salt Lake City they are employed five on their routes and seven,in the post-office.
    The court below decides:
    1. The regulation (§ 647) which provides that carriers may be employed in the intervals'between their trips “in such manner as the postmaster may direct, but not as clerks,” leaves the office work which they may do wholly undefined. ■ ■
    2. Where a postmaster having nine carriers and only three clerks, whose united force was barely able to carry on the business of the office, interpreted the regulation to mean that carriers might be employed in the distribution of mail matter within the office, the court, in the silence of the Post-Office Department, will not hold that his interpretation was wrong.
    8. All work relating to mail matter which carriers distribute and collect must be regardéd as carrier service within the intent of the Eight-hour laxo 24th May, 1888 (25 Stat. L., p. 157).
    4. The eight-hour law was not intended as a door of evasion whereby a postmaster can bring into his office additional clerks for additional pay; but where the necessities of an office require the services of the carriers after their own work is done, they will be entitled to additional compensation for all in excess of eight hours, notwithstanding the provision.of the Revised Statutes (§ 1764) that no compensation “shall be made for axiy ext/ra service whatever.”
    
    5. Where a statute restricts the service of an employé receiving an annual salary to eight hours per day, and provides that if he be employed a greater number of hours “he shall be paid extra for the same in proportion to the salary now fixed by laxo,” the computation of extra time will follow the general usage of the Treasury, and be reckoned by taking a day as the three hundred and sixty-fifth part of a year.
    
      6. A statute which provides that increased pay shall he in proportion to increased work can not he construed as intended to, change the long-estahlished usage of the Treasury in the computation of salaries, nor as intended to prescribe one rate for regular work and another for extra.
    7. Under the eight-hour law a carrier is entitled to eight hours’ pay whether eight hours work he given him or not. For any excess of work on any day he is entitled to extra pay. The Dejjartment can not give him a deficit of work one day and an excess another, and make a monthly average of the number of hours employed.
    The decision of the court below is affirmed on the same grounds.
   Mr. Justice Blatchbord

delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court, March 13, 1893.

In the case of Frank Gates, of the same class, Mr. Justice Blatchbord delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court on the same day, affirming the decision of the court below on the same grounds.