Opinion ID: 784757
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Rutherford

Text: 38 Rutherford confirmed that the definition of employ in the FLSA cannot be reduced to formal control over the physical performance of another's work. In Rutherford, the Supreme Court held that a slaughterhouse jointly employed workers who de-boned meat on its premises, despite the fact that a boning supervisor — with whom the slaughterhouse had entered into a contract — directly controlled the terms and conditions of the meat boners' employment. Specifically, the supervisor, rather than the slaughterhouse, (i) hired and fired the boners, (ii) set their hours, and, (iii) after being paid a set amount by the slaughterhouse for each one hundred pounds of de-boned meat, paid the boners for their work. Rutherford, 331 U.S. at 726, 730, 67 S.Ct. 1473. 39 In determining that the meat boners were employees of the slaughterhouse notwithstanding the role played by the boning supervisor, the Court examined the circumstances of the whole activity, id. at 730, 67 S.Ct. 1473, but also isolated specific relevant factors that help distinguish a legitimate contractor from an entity that suffers or permit[s] its subcontractor's employees to work. First, the Court noted that the boners did a specialty job on the production line; that is, their work was a part of the integrated unit of production at the slaughterhouse. Id. at 729-30, 67 S.Ct. 1473. The Court noted also that responsibility under the boning contracts passed from one boning supervisor to another without material changes in the work performed at the slaughterhouse; that the slaughterhouse's premises and equipment were used for the boners' work; that the group of boners had no business organization that could or did shift as a unit from one slaughterhouse to another; and that the managing official of the slaughterhouse, in addition to the boners' purported employer, closely monitored the boners' performance and productivity. Id. Based on its analysis of these factors, the Court imposed FLSA liability on the slaughterhouse. 40 Like the case at bar, Rutherford was a joint employment case, as it is apparent from the Supreme Court's opinion that the boners were, first and foremost, employed by the boning supervisor who had entered into a contract with the slaughterhouse. See id. at 724-25 (explaining that the boning supervisor exercised the prerogatives of an employer, including hiring workers, managing their work, and paying them). Rutherford thus held that, in certain circumstances, an entity can be a joint employer under the FLSA even when it does not hire and fire its joint employees, directly dictate their hours, or pay them. 7