Opinion ID: 429598
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: statutory rights to overtime pay

Text: 21 Appellants argue that the trial court erred in admitting evidence of a past practice of guards staying on employer premises twenty-four hours a day for the duration of a strike, and only being paid for twelve-hour on-duty shifts and emergency on-duty time. Likewise they argue that no evidence should have been admitted to show that the past practice resulted in an agreement, just prior to the strike in question, regarding what was noncompensable time. It is urged that such evidence was irrelevant and prejudicial since an employee's right to a minimum wage and to overtime pay under the Act ... cannot be abridged by contract or otherwise waived. Barrentine v. Arkansas-Best Freight System, 450 U.S. 728, 101 S.Ct. 1437, 1444-45, 67 L.Ed.2d 641 (1981). Appellants assert that an agreement regarding work hours is not a defense to a case brought under the FLSA. 22 It is true that an agreement for an employee to work fifty hours a week at a non-overtime rate or to work at less than the minimum wage would not be enforceable, since an employee's right to a minimum wage per hour or overtime pay for hours over forty hours a week is not subject to waiver by the employee. We wrote in Mitchell v. Turner, 286 F.2d 104, 106 (5th Cir.1960), that no understanding between an employer and employees that the rest periods were to be non compensable [is] a legal contract. At issue was whether employees should have been compensated for two fifteen-minute rest breaks in their work day. We held that the test for determining whether the rest breaks were compensable time was whether the time was spent primarily for the employer's benefit, a fact question and not controlled by contract. We therefore remanded the case to the district court. 23 Our statement that an agreement on what would be considered work time would not be enforceable was made to caution the trial court that such an agreement would not be controlling as to for whose benefit the time was spent, not that such an agreement was irrelevant. That an agreement between the parties is one factor that the fact finder properly should consider, however, was made plain in Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134, 137, 65 S.Ct. 161, 163, 89 L.Ed. 124 (1944). The Supreme Court concluded that [w]hether in a concrete case such time falls within or without the Act is a question of fact.... This involves scrutiny and construction of the agreements between the particular parties ... and all of the surrounding circumstances. 24 The appellants themselves rely heavily upon Barrentine v. Arkansas-Best Freight System, 450 U.S. 728, 101 S.Ct. 1437, 1446, 67 L.Ed.2d 641 (1981). Yet in that case, the Supreme Court commented that what constitutes the 'workweek,' or 'principal' rather than 'preliminary or postliminary' activities are complex mixed questions of fact and law. The dissent in that case characterized such questions as entirely factual. Id. 101 S.Ct. at 1450 (Burger and Rehnquist, JJ., dissenting). 25 In the leading early case of Armour & Co. v. Wantock, 323 U.S. 126, 133, 65 S.Ct. 165, 168, 89 L.Ed. 118 (1944), the Court stated that [w]hether 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. The trial court properly admitted evidence of an agreement between Arco and the plaintiff guards since such an agreement was a circumstance to consider in determining whether the off-duty time in the plant was spent primarily for Arco's benefit.