Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-12-15975/USCOURTS-ca9-12-15975-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 710
Nature of Suit: Fair Labor Standards Act
Cause of Action: 

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FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

STEVE BALESTRIERI; KEN BABCOCK;

ROBERT S. BLACK, JR.; AARON

BLANFORD; TIM BOGNER; DAVID

BRAGG; KEVIN BRANDON; RODNEY

BROVELLI; THOMAS CALVERT;

DAVID CARR; PATRICK CARRILLO;

TONY CIARDELLA; GORDON COE;

DAN COYLE; ROB DEHONEY; CHRIS

DENNEBAUM; DAVID DICKINSON;

MARCO DITO; ANTHONY EGGIMANN;

TODD ELLIS; JOSEPH L. FIGONE, JR.;

ROSS FRAZEE; WILLIAM GILMORE;

DANIEL GIRAUDO; JOHN GIRAUDO;

MIKE GRADY; GLENN GRANT;

MICHAEL HARRINGTON; TROY

HOLT; FELKAK M. HOUSE; MICHAEL

HUGHES; JANE O’NEIL HUNT; SCOTT

HULTON; BRETT JENSEN; SETH

JOHNSON; ROBERT JOHNSON;

JONATHAN D. JOHNSTON; RONALD

KEEFER; RANDALL J. KELLY;

MICHAEL LAMB; CHUNG LAI; MIKE

LEMOS; EHREN MACDONALD; JASON

MARTIN; GREG MAYS; WILLIAM

MCFARLAND; ERIC MCGLENNON;

MATTHEW MENARD; MARTIN E.

MIJANGOS; GEORGE MILLER; R.

JAMES MONTALVO; ANTHONY

MORALES; BRENDAN CHARLES

No. 12-15975

D.C. No.

4:10-cv-03102-

SBA

OPINION

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2 BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST.

MURPHY; ANDREW J. MURTAGH;

THOMAS NEYLAW; KENNETH L.

OLIVER; PHIL VAN ORDEN;

CHUCK PAPANGELLIN; CHRIS

PIMENTEL; MATTHEW PRUITT;

JASON PUCCINELLI; JOEY QUADT;

JOHN J. QUADT; JOHN RENNER;

STEVE ROHRER; JEFF SCHREIBER;

KEITH SLADE; THOMAS SMITH;

MICHAEL STAHL; KENNETH STEELE;

STEVE SUSA; MIKE SWEENEY; GARY

TORRE; ROY TRESTER; WALTER

VIDOSH; RICH J. VILLA; JOE

WALLACE; KEVIN WHITE; GREG

WOMBLE; JOHN J. WURDINGER;

MARK ZAMPARELLI,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

MENLO PARK FIRE PROTECTION

DISTRICT,

Defendant-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of California

Saundra B. Armstrong, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

April 9, 2014—San Francisco, California

Filed September 4, 2015

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BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST. 3

Before: Andrew J. Kleinfeld, Jacqueline H. Nguyen,

and Paul J. Watford, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Kleinfeld

SUMMARY*

Labor Law

The panel affirmed the district court’s summary judgment

in an action brought by firefighters and emergency medical

personnel under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Applying Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk, 135 S.

Ct. 513 (2014), the panel held that the plaintiffs were not

entitled to overtime for taking their gear to temporary duty

stations because this activity was not integral and

indispensable to the principal activities the plaintiffs were

employed to perform and therefore was “preliminary” or

“postliminary” under the FLSA as amended by the Portal-toPortal Act.

The panel also held that the Menlo Park Fire Protection

District did not violate the FLSA by excluding money paid

for leave buybacks from the plaintiffs’ “regular rate” of pay,

which was used to calculate overtime.

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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4 BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST.

COUNSEL

Douglas L. Steele (argued) and Thomas A. Woodley,

Woodley & McGillivary, Washington, D.C.; Duane Reno,

Davis & Reno, San Francisco, California, for PlaintiffsAppellants.

Suzanne Solomon (argued), Richard Bolanos and Arlin

Kachalia, Liebert Cassidy Whitmore, San Francisco,

California, for Defendant-Appellee.

OPINION

KLEINFELD, Senior Circuit Judge:

This is a firefighters’ overtime dispute.

Firefighters and emergency medical personnel of the

Menlo Park Fire Protection District claim that two of the

District’s policies violate the Fair Labor Standards Act. They

claim entitlement to overtime for taking their gear to

temporary duty stations. And they claim that the District’s

system for paying cash in lieu of unused leave time violates

the Act. The district court granted summary judgment in

favor of the District. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C.

§ 1291. Reviewing de novo,1 we affirm.

 

1 Bamonte v. City of Mesa, 598 F.3d 1217, 1220 (9th Cir. 2010).

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BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST. 5

I. TURNOUT GEAR

A. Facts

Firefighters need special pants, special coats, helmets

with hoods, and other gear to fight fires. The firefighters are

issued two sets of turnout pants and coats, made of fireresistant fabric with reinforced cuffs and reflective stripes,

and two bags to store them, so that one is always available

while the other set is being laundered. The District issues

only one set of the gear that does not need

laundering—helmets and hoods, boots, and so forth. A

firefighter has to have immediate access to his gear at work.

The firefighters are free to take all the gear home with

them, and bring it in at the beginning of a shift. But they

generally prefer to leave their gear in the fire station, because

of the bulk and dirt, and concerns about exposing their

families to the materials on soiled gear. The Menlo Park Fire

Protection District maintains seven fire stations spread over

a 30-square mile area within San Mateo County, in

California.

The firefighters are organized and have a collective

bargaining agreement. Pursuant to their collective bargaining

agreement, firefighters work two consecutive 24-hour shifts,

beginning and ending at 8 AM, followed by 96 hours off

duty. Thus a firefighter might work from Monday morning

at eight to Wednesdaymorning at eight, take another shift the

following Sunday and Monday, then another the following

Saturday and Sunday, and so forth. Every firefighter gets

four days off between shifts.

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6 BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST.

The turnout gear issues in this case arise from occasions

when a firefighter works a shift in a fire station other than his

home station. That happens, for example, if a firefighter at

another station calls in sick or is on vacation, leaving the

station understaffed. Fire stations must be adequately staffed

for the contingency of a fire, requiring immediate response by

an adequate number of personnel.

Firefighters sign up to be called for visiting shifts when

necessary, so assignments are often voluntary although a

firefighter may also be ordered to work at another station

when necessary. These “temporary assignments” are

lucrative because if a firefighter worked his two-day shift at

his home station, he is paid at time and a half for overtime on

the visiting shift. The call for a visiting shift may come in

either when he is at his station or when he is home off duty. 

A firefighter may be told during his shift that another

firehouse could use him, perhaps the next day. Then he can

just load his turnout gear into his car after his shift at the

home station. He will get paid when he reports at the

beginning of the shift at the visiting station, with his gear. If

he leaves his gear at his home station and has to pick it up for

use at the visiting station, he does so on his own time and will

not get compensated for that.

Or the firefighter may get a phone call at home, when he

is between shifts, to take an overtime shift immediately at a

visiting station. If he left his gear at his home station, he has

to go there to get it before reporting to the visiting station. 

He is paid from the time he got the phone call, not from the

subsequent time when he reports to the visiting station. After

the visiting shift, the firefighter is free to take his gear home

until his next shift, or drop it off at his home station. His pay

starts when he gets the phone call.

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BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST. 7

A firefighter may also get a phone call at home, when he

has put himself on the overtime volunteer list. That list is for

firefighters asked whether theywould like to take an overtime

shift at a visiting station, in addition to the regular shift at

their home station. If the firefighter accepts the volunteer

assignment, and has left his gear at work, he has to get it

before reporting at the beginning of the visiting shift. He is

not compensated for the time it takes to go to his home

station and get his gear.

If a firefighter arrives early for his shift, perhaps showing

up at seven in the morning for a shift starting at eight, he may

be told to report to a visiting station. Getting his gear out of

his locker and driving over to the visiting station to begin his

shift there instead of his home station at eight is not

compensated.

The overtime claim at issue is for the time it takes to deal

with gear in the two uncompensated situations, the voluntary

acceptance of an overtime shift when the firefighter is called

at home or asked if he wants it during his shift, and the time

to load up gear when the firefighter has come to work early

and been told to report to a visiting station. In the latter

situation, he would have had uncompensated time from when

he arrived at his home station until the beginning of his shift,

but would not have had to spend it loading up his gear. The

firefighters also claim overtime for the time it takes to drop

off their gear at their home stations after taking a visiting

shift.

Other than the emergency calls, if the firefighter has to

drive to his station to get his gear and drive over to the

visiting station, he spends a half hour or so doing that without

compensation. This time is compensated in emergency

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8 BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST.

situations because overtime starts from the phone call, but not

when the firefighter volunteers for overtime at a visiting

station. If he prefers not to take his gear home with him, he

may spend another half hour or so driving his gear to his

home station and dropping it off. The firefighters’ view is

that they ought to get paid for this work-related activity. The

District’s view is that if the firefighters do not want to spend

their own time getting their gear, they do not have to, because

they are entitled to take it home with them and have it

available without the need to retrieve before going to the

visiting station.

B. Analysis

Most work requires people to do some things before they

start that theywould not do otherwise. A construction worker

may put on steel-toed boots less comfortable than the shoes

he wears to the mall on Saturday and load up his tools in his

car. A lawyer may put on a suit and tie that he does not wear

to the mall on Saturday. And both, like many other workers,

may drive to their work locations, park, and walk to where

they work, before they go on the clock. And both may as a

formal or practical matter be required to do these things for

work, even though they do not get paid for them. So what

counts as compensable work, what counts as overtime? This

question has turned out to be important, for calculating

overtime, and difficult.

This overtime case must be decided under the Fair Labor

Standards Act as amended by the Portal-to-Portal Act of

1947. The Act excludes from compensable work, and

overtime computation, commuting time and activities that are 

“preliminary” or “postliminary” to the “principal . . .

activities” that the employee “is employed to perform”:

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BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST. 9

(1) walking, riding, or traveling to and from

the actual place of performance of the

principal activity or activities which such

employee is employed to perform, and

(2) activities which are preliminary to or

postliminary to said principal activity or

activities,

which occur either prior to the time on any

particular workday at which such employee

commences, or subsequent to the time on any

particular workday at which he ceases, such

principal activity or activities.2

No one would expect to pay an office worker for the time

it takes to shave and put on a suit and tie. Everyone expects

to pay an electrical worker for the time it takes to carry

conduit from the pile of construction materials at the site to

the location on the site where the conduit is to be installed.

The issue in this case is whether, in the disputed

circumstances, a firefighter’s activities of collecting and

loading into his car his turnout gear, and driving it to a station

other than his home station, are “preliminary” or

“postliminary” to the “principal activities” for which

firefighters are employed. The district court held that as a

matter of law they are and thus uncompensable under the Act. 

We agree.

After the enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act of

1938, the Supreme Court held in Tennessee Coal, Iron &

 

2

 29 U.S.C. § 254(a).

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10 BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST.

Railroad Co. v. Muscoda Local No. 123 that the time miners

spent on their difficult and dangerous trip, largely

underground, after checking in for work, on their way to the

working face, was compensable work under the Act.3

Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co. held that the minimum

necessary time spent walking from the time clock to the

pottery workers’ benches “along clean, painted floors of the

brightly illuminated and well ventilated building” where they

were free to take whatever route they wished and make

personal visits along the way, counted as compensable work

for overtime purposes, just as much as the dangerous and

difficult miners’ underground movement.4

Congress responded to these and lower court decisions

with the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947, finding that the Fair

Labor Standards Act had been “interpreted judicially in

disregard of long-established customs,” creating “wholly

unexpected liabilities, immense in amount and retroactive in

operation,” that would “bring about financial ruin” or

“seriously impair the capital resources of many

[employers].”5 The Portal-to-Portal Act narrowed the

coverage of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

6

It added the

“preliminary” and “postliminary” language that is the focus

of many cases since, including this one.

 

3

 321 U.S. 590, 598 (1944).

 

4

 328 U.S. 680, 683, 691 (1946).

 

5

 29 U.S.C. § 251(a).

 

6

 29 U.S.C. § 254(a).

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BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST. 11

Much of the case law since the Portal-to-Portal Act has

addressed “donning and doffing.” Steiner v. Mitchell held

that the time spent changing clothes at the beginning and

showering and changing at the end of the workday, for

protection from the dangerously caustic and toxic materials

they worked with, was not “preliminary” or “postliminary.”7

The explanation was that this donning and doffing, required

by law and for worker safety, was “an integral and

indispensable part of the [workers’] principal activities.”8

In

Alvarez v. IBP, Inc., we had held that donning and doffing

required protective clothes and gear before cutting meat was

integral and indispensable to the activity of cutting meat.9 On

review, our decision was affirmed, though the issue before

the Court was not the donning and doffing, but rather the

walking between the locker room and the meat cutting

station.10In its consolidated opinion, the Court affirmed in

part and reversed in part a First Circuit decision, and held that

time spent waiting to don and doff at a poultry processing

plant was not compensable for overtime purposes.11 The

Court compared this sometimes necessarywaiting time to the

necessary time spent walking from the time clock to the work

station in Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., and since it

was “indisputable” that the walking time was excluded under

the Portal-to-Portal Act, even though it was necessary, the

 

7

 350 U.S. 247, 250–51 (1956).

 

8

Id. at 256.

9

339 F.3d 894, 903 (9th Cir. 2003), aff’d on other grounds, 546 U.S. 21

(2005).

 

10 IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U.S. 21, 32 (2005).

 

11 Id. at 42.

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12 BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST.

waiting time to don and doff was excluded.12 The reason was

that the waiting time was “two steps removed from the

productive activity,” too far removed to be “integral” to

slaughtering chickens.13

We held in Ballaris v. Wacker Siltronic Corp. that

donning and doffing special gowns, for the employer’s

benefit, to work in clean rooms of a chip manufacturer (where

a tiny speck of dust ruins what may be an expensive computer

chip), was compensable.14 Our decision rested on two

factors, that the donning and doffing was for the benefit of the

employer, and that the employer required it.

But in Bamonte v. City of Mesa, we held the other way,

limiting Ballaris.

15 Bamonte holds that the time police

officers spent donning and doffing their uniforms at the

station was not compensable under the Fair Labor Standards

Act.16 We distinguished Ballaris on the ground that the

police officers could don and doff at home if they wished, so

donning and doffing at the police station was not required or

for the employer’s benefit.17 As in the case before us now,

the police officers had reasons for not performing the activity

at home, such as risk of access by family members to

 

12 Id. at 41.

 

13 Id. at 42.

 

14 370 F.3d 901, 912 (9th Cir. 2004).

 

15 598 F.3d 1217 (9th Cir. 2010).

 

16 Id. at 1225.

 

17 Id. at 1225–26.

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BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST. 13

firearms and exposure of family members to contaminants

and bodily fluids.18 But these reasons, for the benefit of the

employees and not the employers, were not enough to make

changing at the police station compensable work.19

The case before us, unlike those above, is not a donning

and doffing case. We addressed issues other than donning

and doffing in Busk v. Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc.20

Warehouse workers at Amazon had to go through a security

check on their way out of the building, to protect the

company from theft. We held that “preliminary” and

“postliminary” activities remain compensable under the Fair

Labor Standards Act if “integral and indispensable” to the

“employees’ principal activities,” a requirement met if they

were “necessary to the principal work performed” and “done

for the benefit of the employer.”21 We held that this test was

satisfied because the security check had to be done at the

premises, it was for the benefit of the employer (preventing

employee theft), and the employer required it.22

But we were reversed. In Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc.

v. Busk, the Supreme Court held unanimously that the time

waiting to clear security on the way out was not compensable

 

18 Id. at 1220.

 

19 Id. at 1225–26.

20 713 F.3d 525 (9th Cir. 2013), rev’d, 574 U.S. ____, 135 S. Ct. 513

(2014).

 

21 Id. at 530 (internal quotation marks omitted).

 

22 Id. at 531.

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14 BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST.

under the Fair Labor Standards Act.23 Even though the

employer required the security check before the employee

could leave the building and go home, the Court held that it

was “postliminary.”24 The Court held that “[t]he security

screenings . . . were not ‘integral and indispensable’ to the

employees’ duties as warehouse workers.”25 The Court notes

that the employer “could have eliminated the screenings

altogether without impairing the employees’ ability to

complete their work,” which was getting products off the

shelves and packaging them for shipment.26 They were hired

to do that, not to go through security screenings. The Court

said that we “erred by focusing on whether an employer

required a particular activity” because “[t]he integral and

indispensable test is tied to the productive work that the

employee is employed to perform.”27“If the test could be

satisfied merely by the fact that an employer required an

activity, it would sweep into ‘principal activities’ the very

activities that the Portal-to-Portal Act was designed to

address.”28 The Court held that our “for the benefit of the

employer” test was “similarly overbroad.”29

 

23 574 U.S. ____, 135 S. Ct. 513, 518 (2014).

 

24 Integrity Staffing, 135 S. Ct. at 518.

 

25 Id.

 

26 Id.

 

27 Id. at 519.

 

28 Id.

 

29 Id.

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BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST. 15

Under Integrity Staffing, it is not enough to make activity

compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act that the

employer requires it and it is done for the benefit of the

employer. Even activities required by the employer and for

the employer’s benefit are “preliminary” or “postliminary” if

not integral and indispensable to “the productive work that

the employee is employed to perform.”30

“[A]n activity is

integral and indispensable to the principal activities that an

employee is employed to perform—and thus compensable

under the FLSA—if it is an intrinsic element of those

activities and one with which the employee cannot dispense

if he is to perform his principal activities.”31

Applying Integrity Staffing to the present case, the

correctness of the district court’s decision is plain. When the

firefighter has put his name on the list for overtime calls, he

is free to take his gear home, and if he gets a call, he can go

to the visiting station for the assigned shift without even

stopping by his home station.32 Thus, driving to the home

station first is not “indispensable” to the firefighters’

principal activities.33If the firefighter has come to work

early, as plaintiffs’ evidence suggests they sometimes do, and

then must spend what was expected to be leisure time before

the shift, gathering and transporting turnout gear to a visiting

 

30 Id.

 

31 Id.

32 Cf. Bamonte, 598 F.3d at 1225–26 (rejecting the argument that

donning and doffing protective gear is integral and indispensable to an

employee’s principal activities when the employee chooses to keep the

protective gear at work but is not required to do so).

 

33 Integrity Staffing, 135 S. Ct. at 518.

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16 BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST.

station, that activity is “preliminary” because it is not

“intrinsic” to the firefighting activity that he is employed to

perform.

The Fair Labor Standards Act says expressly what

firefighters are employed to do: they are “employed by a fire

department of a municipality,” have “the legal authority and

responsibility to engage in fire suppression” and are “engaged

in the prevention, control, and extinguishment of fires or

response to emergency situations where life, property, or the

environment is at risk.”34 Loading up turnout gear to report

to a shift at a visiting station is “two steps removed” from that

activity, not “integral and indispensable” to it.35

II. ANNUAL LEAVE BUYBACK

The Fair Labor Standards Act generally requires

employers to pay time-and-a-half for overtime. The language

used is “one and one-half times the regular rate at which he

is employed.”36 One cannot multiply the “regular rate” by 1.5

without knowing what the “regular rate” is, and that can be a

complicated question. The parties disputewhether the district

court, which accepted the District’s exclusion of money paid

for leave buybacks from the “regular rate,” got it right.

The statute defines the “regular rate” to mean “all

remuneration for employment,” subject to eight listed

 

34 29 U.S.C. § 203(y).

35 Integrity Staffing, 135 S. Ct. at 518 (quoting IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez,

546 U.S. 21, 42 (2005)) (internal quotation marks omitted).

 

36 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1) (emphasis added).

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BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST. 17

exclusions and various qualifications.37 The one that matters

here is the exclusion from the “regular rate” of “payments

made for occasional periods when no work is performed due

to vacation, holiday, illness . . . . and other similar payments

to an employee which are not made as compensation for his

hours of employment.”38 The regulations issued by the

Department of Labor call such compensation “pay for certain

idle hours,”39and interpret the statute similarly to exclude

vacation leave buybacks from the regular rate:

(a) Sums payable whether employee works

or not . . . . Suppose an employee who is

entitled to such a paid idle holiday or paid

vacation foregoes his holiday or vacation and

performs work for the employer on the

holiday or during the vacation period. If,

under the terms of his employment, he is

entitled to a certain sum as holiday or

vacation pay, whether he works or not, and

receives pay at his customary rate (or higher)

in addition for each hour that he works on the

holiday or vacation day, the certain sum

allocable to holiday or vacation pay is still to

be excluded from the regular rate. It is still not

regarded as compensation for hours of work if

he is otherwise compensated at his customary

rate (or at a higher rate) for his work on such

days. Since it is not compensation for work it

 

37 Id. § 207(e).

 

38 Id. § 207(e)(2).

 

39 29 C.F.R. § 778.218.

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may not be credited toward overtime

compensation due under the Act . . . .40

The regulations do not discuss sick leave buybacks one

way or the other. They do, however, interpret the statute not

to exclude from the “regular rate” “promised bonuses” such

as “attendance bonuses.”41 The firefighters argue that we

should interpret buyback of sick leave as an attendance

bonus, and count it in the regular rate.

The Sixth Circuit rejects the firefighters’ view. Featsent

v. City of Youngstown holds that payments for unused sick

leave are “similar to payments made when no work is

performed due to illness,” which the statute expressly

excludes from the regular rate.42

But in some circumstances, the firefighters’ argument,

that buybacks of sick leave amount to bonuses for attendance

and should count as part of the regular rate, is supportable. 

The Department of Labor deemed sick leave buyback to be an

includable promised bonus in an Opinion Letter, where the

collective bargaining agreement provided that“[a]ll

employees will be eligible for a stipend for perfect

attendance.”43 The Department explained that under those

facts, buybacks of sick leave should count as part of the

 

40 29 C.F.R. § 778.219.

 

41 Id. § 778.211.

 

42 70 F.3d 900, 905 (6th Cir. 1995).

43 U.S. Dep’t of Labor, Opinion Letter FLSA2009-19 at 4 (Jan. 16,

2009), available at http://www.dol.gov/WHD/opinion/FLSA/

2009/2009_01_16_19_FLSA.pdf [hereinafter Opinion Letter].

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BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST. 19

“regular rate” “because the stipends are attendance bonuses,”

and “perfect attendance stipends encourage employees not to

use or abuse sick leave.”44“Attendance bonuses” count as

part of the “regular rate” under the Regulations.

Likewise, the Eighth and Tenth Circuits have so

determined, in the circumstances before them. A split

decision in Acton v. City of Columbia holds that where sick

leave buybacks were conditioned on several years of coming

to work regularly, they functioned as a nondiscretionary

reward for regular workplace attendance, so counted as part

of the regular rate.45 Chavez v. City of Albuquerque holds

that sick leave buybacks are generally in the nature of

attendance bonuses, which count as part of the regular rate,

because of employers’ incentives to reduce unscheduled leave

that burdens an employer with finding a replacement.46

Both views are debatable. Buying back unused sick leave

is not the same thing as allowing sick employees to stay

home. And it is not reasonable to assume that employers

generally want employees to come to work, sick or not. 

Some employers may perhaps just want warm bodies

(perhaps overly warm if feverish) in the chairs, to avoid the

nuisance of their absence. Other employers may prefer,

though, to have sick employees stay home, to avoid errors

they may make, illnesses they may spread to others at the

workplace, and to be decent to their employees. There is no

 

44 Id.

 

45 436 F.3d 969, 978 (8th Cir. 2006).

 

46 630 F.3d 1300, 1309–10 (10th Cir. 2011).

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20 BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST.

reason to assume that employers providing sick leave prefer

that their employees not use it.

We need not resolve this conflict among our sister circuits

in this case because the firefighters cannot prevail under

either standard. First, as noted above, Featsent expressly

equates sick leave buyback with “payments made when no

work is performed due to illness,” which are excluded from

the regular rate under the statute’s plain language.

47 This

reasoning dooms the firefighters’ claim at the outset. Second,

even under the rationale of the Opinion Letter, Acton, and

Chavez, the firefighters cannot prevail because the District

has melded sick leave and vacation leave together into

undifferentiated “annual leave.” There is no buyback of sick

leave as such, just a buyback of leave, once it accumulates to

the point that it affects cash flow too much. And the District

has no perfect attendance or even good attendance bonus built

into the leave program. “The function of the Cashout,” the

District states without contradiction, “is to mitigate the

District’s liability for banked leave hours.”

The notion of sick leave in this case arises from the way

annual leave accumulates. The District calculates leave under

a “Memorandum of Understanding” it and the firefighters

adopted under a now-expired collective bargaining

agreement. Their deal is that all firefighters receive “annual

leave in lieu of separate vacation and sick leave.” The phrase

“in lieu of” means the firefighters no longer get separate

vacation leave and sick leave. The distinction between

vacation leave and sick leave survives only in when the leave

can be used, not how it is bought back. Firefighters can take

sick leave when they get sick, but can use vacation leave only

 

47 70 F.3d at 905.

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BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST. 21

in the year following accrual. They have to schedule their

vacations, but, obviously, not their illnesses. For example, in

2007, a firefighter would accrue six hours per pay period

under what used to be the “sick leave” schedule, and that six

hours could be used in the same year, but the additional hours

accumulated in 2007 under the old vacation leave schedule

could not be used until 2008. Regardless of which of the old

accrual schedules generated the hours, once usable, any leave

can be used for vacation, not just illness. Thus what might

have been accumulated under the old sick leave schedule can

now be used to go fishing, not just to stay home with the flu. 

Though accumulated under the old “sick leave” schedule, no

leave is “sick leave.” All the hours pour into the same pot,

the only difference being that hours accumulated under the

old vacation leave schedule get poured in the following year,

and vacations should ordinarily be scheduled with the

firefighter’s supervisor.

The firefighters urge that because hours accumulated

under the old vacation leave schedule do not pour into the

unrestricted pot until the following year, buyback should be

treated as a buyback of sick leave. We cannot see why, since

however the hours in the unrestricted pot were earned, they

get bought back once the pot exceeds 480 hours. The District

does not even keep track of which of the old schedules

generated which hours in the pot. The firefighters also urge

that as a practical matter, the buybacks ought to be treated as

buybacks of sick leave, because, as one fireman said in his

declaration, the “vast majority” of firefighters take all the

vacation they are entitled to during the year they may take it. 

That declaration does not establish a genuine issue of material

fact, because the “vast majority” does not mean “all,” and the

firefighters are not required to use all their unrestricted leave. 

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22 BALESTRIERI V. MENLO PARK FIRE PROT. DIST.

Some may prefer vacation, some may prefer cash, and they

can proceed however they like.

Accordingly, we reject the firefighters’ contention that

leave buyback should be included in the calculation of the

regular rate.

AFFIRMED.

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