Opinion ID: 744609
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Liability for Unpaid Wages.

Text: 10 The FLSA requires compensation at one and a half times the regular rate when employers cause their employees to work more than forty hours a week. See 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1). The Secretary contends that SNET systematically undercompensated its outside craft employees by failing to pay them overtime wages for activities performed during their lunch break. Such work, according to the Secretary, caused the outside craft workers to be employed for more than forty hours per week. Thus, the crux of this dispute is whether the restrictions imposed by SNET on its outside craft workers transform an otherwise uncompensable meal break into one that is compensable under the FLSA. This is an issue of first impression in the Second Circuit. 11 In aid of its enforcement authority under the FLSA, the Department of Labor (DoL) has issued interpretive regulations, in effect at all times relevant to this appeal, that specifically address compensability of employees' mealtimes. 12 (a) Bona fide meal periods. Bona fide meal periods are not worktime.... The employee must be completely relieved from duty for the purposes of eating regular meals.... The employee is not relieved if he is required to perform any duties, whether active or inactive, while eating. For example, an office employee who is required to eat at his desk or a factory worker who is required to be at his machine is working while eating. 13 (b) Where no permission to leave premises. It is not necessary that an employee be permitted to leave the premises if he is otherwise completely freed from duties during the meal period. 14 29 C.F.R. § 785.19 (citations omitted) (emphasis added). SNET's liability would not be in doubt if we were to apply this regulation as written. It is not open to reasonable question that SNET did not completely relieve its outside craft employees from duty during their lunch break. However, the Secretary concedes that the test is not so rigid. Rather, the Secretary contends that § 785.19 should be construed in a practical manner and points us to certain agency constructions of the regulation. 15 In a Wage-Hour Opinion Letter, dated August 25, 1980, the DoL's then-Deputy Administrator found that postal employees responsible for the safekeeping of their mail during lunch break generally were not entitled to compensation under the FLSA. In so construing § 785.19, the DoL's representative commented that a 16 broad reading of the phrase relieved of all duty ... would extend the requirement of compensation to 24 hours of the day in the case of outside workers who are required to take their employer's tools or materials home with them or who drive home in the company's vehicles, so as to have them available for going directly to the work site the following morning. 17 Secretary of Labor's Supplemental Appendix at 6 (Letter of Henry T. White, Jr., Deputy Administrator, U.S. Dep't of Labor (Aug. 25, 1980)). The Wage-Hour letter continues: compensation would be required for a letter carrier only if the postal material in his possession were of such quantity or of such nature that the carrier's mealtime was substantially impeded in the free disposition of the time for his own beneficial use. Id. 18 In a DoL letter of July 29, 1985, construing § 785.19 in the context of law enforcement employees' meal break, the DoL's representative commented: 19 we would not consider the fact that [law enforcement employees] remain in uniform [during meals] as meaning that they are on duty while eating a meal. Moreover, we would not consider infrequent interruptions of short duration which may occur when a citizen compliments, or asks the law enforcement employee a simple question, as nullifying the exclusion of an otherwise bona fide meal period from compensable hours of work. 20 Id. at 9 (Letter of Susan R. Meisinger, Deputy Under Secretary, U.S. Dep't of Labor (July 29, 1985)). Although this letter also states that a meal break must be an uninterrupted period during which the employee has no duties whatsoever to perform, id., and thus suggests a broader view of compensability of meal periods under the FLSA, the Secretary in its brief cites both letters as examples of the DoL's practical, and thus implicitly flexible, approach to construing § 785.19. See Brief of Secretary of Labor at 19-21. This flexible approach to determining compensability of meal break activity is consistent with the reasoning of various courts. 21 The central issue in mealtime cases is whether employees are required to work as that term is understood under the FLSA. See Henson v. Pulaski County Sheriff Dep't, 6 F.3d 531, 533-34 (8th Cir.1993). Although the FLSA itself does not define work, the Supreme Court has attempted to do so. In Tennessee Coal, Iron & R. Co. v. Muscoda Local No. 123, 321 U.S. 590, 598, 64 S.Ct. 698, 703, 88 L.Ed. 949 (1944), the Court held that work under the FLSA means physical or mental exertion (whether burdensome or not) controlled or required by the employer and pursued necessarily and primarily for the benefit of the employer and his business. At about the same time, the Court counseled that the determination of what constitutes work is necessarily fact-bound. See, e.g., Armour & Co. v. Wantock, 323 U.S. 126, 133, 65 S.Ct. 165, 168, 89 L.Ed. 118 (1944) (Whether time is spent predominantly for the employer's benefit or for the employee's is a question dependent upon all the circumstances of the case.); Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134, 136-37, 65 S.Ct. 161, 162-63, 89 L.Ed. 124 (1944) (similar). For example, time spent waiting for an event to occur, such as a fire, may constitute work if an employer hired an employee for that function. See Armour, 323 U.S. at 133-34, 65 S.Ct. at 168-69; Skidmore, 323 U.S. at 136-37, 65 S.Ct. at 162-63. 22 To be consistent with the FLSA's use of the term work as construed in Armour and Skidmore, we believe § 785.19 must be interpreted to require compensation for a meal break during which a worker performs activities predominantly for the benefit of the employer. See Lamon v. City of Shawnee, Kansas, 972 F.2d 1145, 1155 (10th Cir.1992) (compensation required during meal periods except when the employee's time is not spent predominantly for the benefit of the employer); Henson, 6 F.3d at 534 (same); Myracle v. General Elec. Co., 1994 WL 456769 at  4 (6th Cir. Aug. 23, 1994) (per curiam) (same); Alexander v. City of Chicago, 994 F.2d 333, 337 (7th Cir.1993) (same); see also Hill v. United States, 751 F.2d 810, 814 (6th Cir.1984) (meal periods not compensable unless activities could be characterized as substantial). But see Kohlheim v. Glynn County, Georgia, 915 F.2d 1473, 1477 (11th Cir.1990) (essential consideration ... is whether the employees are in fact relieved from work for the purpose of eating a regularly scheduled meal); Donovan v. Bel-Loc Diner, Inc., 780 F.2d 1113, 1115 n. 1 (4th Cir.1985) (adopting, without comment, § 785.19's completely-removed-from-duty standard). In our view, this predominant benefit standard sensibly integrates developing case law with the regulations' language and purpose, Alexander, 994 F.2d at 337, and more importantly, with the language of the FLSA itself. 23 To the extent that the Secretary advocates a literal reading of § 785.19, similar to that adopted by the Fourth Circuit in Bel-Loc Diner, 780 F.2d at 1115 n. 1, we decline to follow this construction. Section 785.19, as with other interpretive regulations issued by the Secretary under the FLSA, does not have the force of law. See, e.g., Skidmore, 323 U.S. at 139, 65 S.Ct. at 164; Freeman v. National Broad. Co., 80 F.3d 78, 83-84 (2d Cir.1996). Although not controlling on courts, such regulations do constitute a body of experience and informed judgement to which courts and litigants may properly resort for guidance, Skidmore, 323 U.S. at 140, 65 S.Ct. at 164, and should be viewed as persuasive authority. See Reich v. State of New York, 3 F.3d 581, 588 (2d Cir.1993). However, [t]he weight of such a judgment in a particular case will depend upon the thoroughness evident in its consideration, the validity of its reasoning, its consistency with earlier and later pronouncements, and all those factors which give it power to persuade, if lacking power to control. Skidmore, 323 U.S. at 140, 65 S.Ct. at 164. See also Reich, 3 F.3d at 588. Here, § 785.19, as literally construed, fails to persuade us primarily because the completely-removed-from-duty standard is inconsistent with controlling Supreme Court precedent defining work. See Henson, 6 F.3d at 535. Thus, we believe that the district court was correct in holding that meal periods are compensable under the FLSA when employees during a meal break perform duties predominantly for the benefit of the employer. 24 SNET does not dispute the applicability of the predominant benefit standard but argues that the district court ignored this standard and effectively applied the completely-removed-from-duty standard. We disagree. 25 SNET argues that the lunch breaks predominantly benefit the workers, and not the employer, because during their lunch break the workers' safety and security roles are wholly passive, leaving them free to eat their meal. This argument, whatever its superficial appeal, misses the point. During their lunch break, the workers are restricted to the site for the purpose of performing valuable security service for the company. The importance, indeed indispensability, of these services is evidenced by the mandatory nature of the restrictions that surround the workers' lunch break. To be sure, the workers perform different services during meal breaks than throughout the rest of the day, but the workers' on-site presence is solely for the benefit of the employer and, in their absence, the company would have to pay others to perform those same services. By not compensating these workers, SNET is effectively receiving free labor. 26 SNET's second argument invokes policy and economic concerns. The company contends that a finding of liability would 27 require payment for meals in any industry in which the nature of the work compels employees to remain at or near an outdoor work site, not because they are required to work during their meal periods, but solely because a complex set-up or a particular location makes it impractical to shut down and leave the job site. 28 Brief on Behalf of Defendants-Appellants at 23. This argument, however, fails to acknowledge that the workers are not compelled by the nature of their work to remain at the job site but are required to do so by their employer, on pain of discipline, for the purpose of providing important (albeit non-taxing) security, maintenance and safety services. See SNET, 892 F.Supp. at 393-95. Thus, SNET's argument begs the question at issue in this case: whether outside craft workers were working within the meaning of the FLSA during their constrained mealtimes. 29 Third, SNET argues that the district court's decision conflicts with decisions in several other circuits that have applied the predominant benefit standard. The cases relied upon by SNET, however, are distinguishable. In Avery v. City of Talladega, 24 F.3d 1337, 1347 (11th Cir.1994), Henson, 6 F.3d at 536, and Armitage v. City of Emporia, 982 F.2d 430, 432-33 (10th Cir.1992), the lunch break of law enforcement officers was held not to be compensable. In these cases the officers were permitted during their break to leave their work stations to tend to personal matters. Avery, 24 F.3d at 1347; Henson, 6 F.3d at 536; Armitage, 982 F.2d at 431. The only restrictions were requirements that officers remain in uniform, Avery, 24 F.3d at 1347, and respond to calls for assistance and inquiries from the public, Avery, 24 F.3d at 1347; Henson, 6 F.3d at 536; Armitage, 982 F.2d at 431. These cases differ from the case at bar in the same way that being on call differs from being on duty. 30 Similarly, in Myracle, plant employees were generally permitted to choose the time and location of their meals and were even permitted to leave the plant during their break. 33 F.3d 55, 1994 WL 456769, at  2. The only arguable limitation was that employees often chose (but were not required) to eat lunch in a room adjacent to their work area so that they could monitor their machines, to forestall potential malfunctions. Id. In this case, SNET requires outside craft employees at open sites to remain on-site to maintain public safety and provide security to the area. 31 Finally, in Hill, 751 F.2d at 811, 814, letter carriers were given a choice of locations at which to eat lunch and, except for maintaining in their possession mail and other postal items, were not expected to perform any tasks. In Hill, as in the other cases on which SNET relies, there was considerable flexibility as to when and where the lunch break might occur. 32