Opinion ID: 4367046
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Permanency of Relationship

Text: The remaining factors require more attention. The first of these is the permanency of the relationship between ODPS and its workers, which looks to the “length and regularity of the working relationship between the parties.” Keller, 781 F.3d at 807 (citation omitted). Independent contractors “often have fixed employment periods and transfer from place to place as particular work is offered to them, whereas employees usually work for only one employer Nos. 17-5995/6071 Acosta v. Off Duty Police Servs., et al. Page 9 and such relationship is continuous and indefinite in duration.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Baker v. Flint Eng’g & Constr. Co., 137 F.3d 1436, 1442 (10th Cir. 1998)). That a party works for more than one company, however, is only “one factor of many to consider in determining whether a worker is economically dependent upon the defendant company,” and “employees may work for more than one employer without losing their benefits under the FLSA.” Id. at 808 (citations omitted). Although ODPS’s workers accepted jobs intermittently, they often worked for ODPS for years—or, in some cases, decades—at a time. Cf. Scantland v. Jeffry Knight, Inc., 721 F.3d 1308, 1318 (11th Cir. 2013) (finding the permanence factor supported employee status where plaintiffs worked for a company “an average of more than five years”). And the length of these relationships did not depend on the worker’s status as sworn or nonsworn. Multiple nonsworn workers testified that they had worked for ODPS for many years. Two sworn officers testified that they had worked for ODPS for almost two decades, and others testified that they had been with ODPS for close to a decade. In addition to length, the regularity of the workers’ relationship with ODPS also favors employee status. Once again, this consistency did not depend on the worker’s status as sworn or nonsworn. Multiple nonsworn workers testified that ODPS had been their sole employer for years at a time. Even those workers who sometimes accepted other work reported that they spent the majority of their time working for ODPS. And while the sworn officers maintained day jobs in law enforcement, many reported working consistently for ODPS throughout the year. One officer testified, for example, that he had routinely worked at least 20 to 25 hours per week for ODPS for “five or six years.” Another officer testified that he had often worked for ODPS “at least 50 hours a week or more,” and that his periodic work for other companies was not “on a permanent basis like working for ODPS.” Despite the long, consistent relationship between ODPS and many of its sworn officers, the district court determined that the work performed by these officers lacked the permanence necessary to establish an employment relationship. Noting that the officers had “other employment and sources of income,” it chose to “[f]ram[e] the issue in terms of whether the workers listed [by the DOL] were ‘economically dependent upon ODPS.’” Thus framed, the Nos. 17-5995/6071 Acosta v. Off Duty Police Servs., et al. Page 10 district court found that “the sworn officers were not economically dependent upon ODPS, but the eight [nonsworn workers] who testified to ODPS being their sole source of income were.” On that basis, the district court decided that the permanence factor supported employee status for only the nonsworn workers. This conclusion was mistaken for two reasons. First, the analysis merged the permanence factor with the ultimate question of the workers’ economic dependence on ODPS. The test of a worker’s economic dependence looks to all six of the factors discussed above and below. The permanence factor, which focuses on the length and consistency of the officers’ work, is only one component of that test. Second, whether a worker has more than one source of income says little about that worker’s employment status. Many workers in the modern economy, including employees and independent contractors alike, must routinely seek out more than one source of income to make ends meet. An income-based rule would deny that economic reality. It would also suffer from problems of practical application. Such a test would, for example, lead to classification of the same worker as an independent contractor during the periods in which she had more than one source of income but then as an employee during the (often brief) periods in between. And as the Fifth Circuit noted in Halferty v. Pulse Drug Co., 821 F.2d 261 (5th Cir. 1987), an incomebased test would also mean that certain “wealthy persons could never be employees under the FLSA.” Id. at 268. On the other end of the scale, such a rule would risk encouraging employers to “avoid liability to workers simply by paying them so low a wage that the workers are forced to live on other sources of income.” Id. That outcome would frustrate the first principles of the FLSA, which is designed to ensure that workers earn a fair wage. To the extent that a worker’s source of income is relevant, it is only so because it speaks indirectly to the question of whether the individual works for more than one company. As we recognized in Keller, however, that an individual works for more than one company is only one consideration of many to make “in determining whether a worker is economically dependent upon the defendant company.” 781 F.3d at 808. Further, this fact is most relevant when it suggests that a worker tends to “transfer from place to place as particular work is offered to [him].” Id. at 807 (citation omitted). In this case, the sworn officers did not bounce from one Nos. 17-5995/6071 Acosta v. Off Duty Police Servs., et al. Page 11 company to another in search of new work. Although some officers testified that they occasionally accepted jobs from other companies, the consistent theme throughout trial was that the officers had two primary sources of employment—their day jobs and their positions at ODPS. That is not the kind of itinerant work that independent contractors ordinarily perform. Given the length and consistency of the relationship between ODPS and its workers, the permanence factor supports employee status for both sworn and nonsworn workers.