Source: https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/ibp-v-alvarez/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 22:31:37+00:00

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While the holding creates a clearer picture of what is included within the compensable workday, the Court’s opinion still leaves unanswered questions concerning the scope of its decision. In addition, there appear to be inconsistencies in the opinion’s language that may require further clarification.
In affirming the lower court’s decision, the Steiner Court held that the employees should be compensated for the time spent showering and donning and doffing their protective work clothes because they were “integral and indispensable” to the principal activity of battery production.11 Citing the legislative history behind the Portal-to-Portal Act, the Court explained that the definition of the term “principal activity or activities” includes those activities which are “integral and indispensable” to the principal activities rendering such activities as “principal” themselves.12 Because the principal activity of battery production could not be accomplished without protecting employees from toxic chemicals, the protective measures were integral and indispensable to, and therefore a part of, that principal activity.
In response to the footnote 49 argument, Thomas C. Goldstein, the employees’ counsel, interpreted the footnote’s “not necessarily” language as noncommittal to the question of whether walking time between the locker room and production floor is compensable. Likewise, Irving L. Gornstein, on behalf of the U.S. as amicus curiae, suggested that the Department of Labor actually should have removed the footnote from its regulations because it clearly contradicts the department’s position.
Nonunique Protective Gear — “Integral and Indispensable”?
The IBP decision leaves some unanswered questions. First, it is not entirely clear whether the Court considers the donning and doffing of nonunique protective gear as integral and indispensable to employees’ principal activities. The Court did affirm the Ninth Circuit’s judgment, which found nonunique gear to meet the Steiner “bipartite integral and indispensable” test. However, there is language in IBP to suggest that the Court may not have agreed with the portion of the Ninth Circuit’s opinion addressing nonunique gear. For example, the Court concluded that “the locker rooms where the special safety gear is donned and doffed are the relevant ‘place of performance’ of the principal activity that the employee was employed to perform within the meaning of Section 4(a)(1).”40 The phrase “special safety gear” indicates that the Court may have adopted the district court’s position that only the donning and doffing of unique gear, like chain-metal aprons, can be considered an employee’s principal activity. Indeed, the Supreme Court merely cited the Ninth Circuit’s rejection of the district court’s position and subsequent incorporation of the de minimisdoctrine without explicitly passing judgment on this discrete issue.
Furthermore, when describing the issues before it, the IBP Court first articulated the portion of the Ninth Circuit’s holding that the employers were not challenging: that “the donning and doffing of unique protective gear are ‘principal activities’ under Section 4 of the Portal-to-Portal Act.”41 Then, in the same paragraph, the Court explained it was only deciding whether the walking time between the locker room and production floor was compensable.42 It is reasonable to assume that the locker rooms to which the Court was referring were locker rooms containing the “unique” protective gear as referenced in the same paragraph. Thus, it is not clear from the IBP opinion whether the holding would have been the same if only the donning and doffing of nonunique protective gear was at issue.
Assuming the Supreme Court did adopt the Ninth Circuit’s entire holding, that lower court’s use of the de minimisdoctrine to preclude compensation for the negligible time spent donning and doffing nonunique protective gear appears to be inconsistent with other language in Court’s decision. As explained above, the Court rejected the employers’ argument that Steiner essentially created an intermediate category of activities — “integral and indispensable” activities — sufficiently “principal” to be compensable but not sufficiently principal to commence the workday. However, the application of the de minimisdoctrine as advocated by the Ninth Circuit to certain nonunique protective gear creates a reverse, yet equally intermediate category of activities: activities that are sufficiently “principal” to commence the workday, but not sufficiently principal to be compensable. The Court did not address this issue.
Questions also exist as to the practical breadth of the compensable workday. It is unclear at what point the continuous workday rule yields to the reality that an actual break in work has occurred. For example, to what extent is a sales person compensated for the drive time to her office after she makes a phone call in the morning from her home to a customer before leaving for the office? Clearly, the phone call qualifies as a principal activity of sales and, thus, triggers the commencement of the compensable workday. Is she then entitled to compensation for her driving time? What if she drives to the parking garage she uses while at work, makes the phone call from the garage, and then walks 10 minutes to the office?
These and other questions have been left for another day. Until then, prudent employers will carefully consider IBP and its implications when calculating compensable working time.
1 IBP, 163 L. Ed. 2d at 305.
2 29 U.S.C. §254 (2005).
3 Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680 (1946). See also Tennessee Coal, Iron & R. Co. v. Muscoda Local No. 123, 321 U.S. 590 (1944); Armour & Co. v. Wantock, 323 U.S. 126 (1944).
6 29 CFR §790.6(b) (2005).
12 Id. at 252-53 (citing the following legislative history: “In accordance with our intention as to the definition of ‘principal activity,’ if the employee could not perform his activity without putting on certain clothes, then the time used in changing into those clothes would be compensable as part of his principal activity.”).
13 IBP, 168 L. Ed. 2d at 298.
15 Alvarez v. IBP, Inc., 2001 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 25344 (D. Wash. 2001).
16 Alvarez, 339 F.3d at 903.
17 See, e.g,, Anderson, 328 U.S. at 692 (“When the matter in issue concerns only a few seconds or minutes of work beyond the scheduled working hours, such trifles may be disregarded. Split-second absurdities are not justified by the actualities of working conditions or by the policy of the Fair Labor Standards Act. It is only when an employee is required to give up a substantial measure of his time and effort that compensable working time is involved.”); Lindow v. United States, 738 F.2d 1057 (9th Cir. 1984).
18 Alvarez, 339 F.3dat 904.
22 Tums, 360 F.3d at 279.
25 IBP, 168 L. Ed. 2d at 294.
27 29 CFR §790.7, n. 49.
28 IBP, 168 L. Ed. 2d. at 302.
Shane T. Muñoz, a partner with Zinober & McCrea, P.A., has been practicing law since 1989. Mr. Muñoz received his B.S. degree (with honors) from the University of New Hampshire in 1977 and his J.D. degree (with high honors) from the University of Connecticut School of Law in 1989. He represents employers in proceedings before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Florida Commission on Human Rights, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, and other federal, state, and local agencies. Mr. Muñoz is board certified in labor and employment.
Neville F. Dastoor, an associate with Zinober & McCrea, P.A., received his B.A. degree in political science, with honors, from the University of Florida and his J.D. in 2004 from the Vanderbilt University Law School where he was the recipient of the 2002 Vanderbilt Scholastic Excellence Award for Legal Writing II. Mr. Dastoor was an associate editor of the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment Law and Practice and was a finalist in the 2003 Vanderbilt Moot Court competition.
This column is submitted on behalf of the Labor and Employment Law Section, Frank D. Kitchen, chair, and Frank E. Brown, editor.

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