Opinion ID: 1386400
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Unauthorized Overtime Is Work

Text: Gotham argues it neither benefits from nor controls the nurses' unauthorized overtime and, accordingly, such time does not constitute work under the Tennessee Coal test (as extended in subsequent cases and elaborated in Holzapfel). Tenn. Coal, 321 U.S. at 598, 64 S.Ct. 698; Holzapfel, 145 F.3d at 522. Gotham seeks support for this proposition in the trial court's findings that (1) Gotham lacks primary control over the nurses' performance of unscheduled shifts; (2) the decision to engage in overtime is made by nurses and hospitals acting in furtherance of their own interests; (3) the income generated by these unauthorized hours is offset by the administrative burdens of operating Gotham's overtime arrangement; and (4) Gotham does not desire the overtime to be performed. Although we detect no clear error in these factual findings, the legal conclusion drawn from themthat the nurses' overtime is not work under the Actwe think is wrong. Whether a nurse is working a morning, afternoon or night shift in emergency care, an operating room, or on a hospital floor, the overtime hours are indistinguishable from the straight-time hours. Such work from the nurses' standpoint is fungible. Work is work, after all. Nurses who work overtime, at the hospitals' request, often continue doing the same kind of work they were doing on their regular shifts. In that respect we believe the district judge mischaracterized the Act when he commented that the extra or overtime work is not work under the statute. As a threshold matter, application of the Tennessee Coal test to the facts of this case is something of a red herring. Contrary to the district court's belief, the Supreme Court's definition (with roots in Webster's Dictionary, see Tenn. Coal, 321 U.S. at 598, 64 S.Ct. 698 n. 11) does not purport to establish a special meaning for work, but simply to guide the courts in applying the word as it is commonly used and understood, id. at 598, 64 S.Ct. 698. Further, if an activity fails the Tennessee Coal test, we understand that result to mean the activity is not work and is not compensable. Here, no party disputes that the performance of overtime at least entitled the nurses to compensation at a regular rate of pay. What Gotham implies is that the nurses' overtime belongs to a new category of exertion, call it quasiwork, that was not contemplated by the drafters of the Act and is subject to its own compensation rules. Gotham conceded in the 1994 consent judgment and again in its appellate brief that it employs its nurses for purposes of the Act. The classification of the nurses' regularly scheduled activities as work within the meaning of the Act follows from this concession. See, e.g., 29 U.S.C. § 203(g) (defining employ to include suffering or permitting work). It is significant, therefore, that there seems to be no distinction between the exertion of Gotham's nurses during unauthorized and authorized hours. In the typical case, by contrast, the Tennessee Coal test is applied to ascertain whether an activity that is markedly different from an employee's primary activities may yet qualify as work. See, e.g., Tenn. Coal, 321 U.S. at 592, 64 S.Ct. 698 (travel time to ore mines); Holzapfel, 145 F.3d at 519 (dog grooming and care by K-9 police officers); Leone v. Mobil Oil Corp., 523 F.2d 1153, 1154 (D.C.Cir.1975) (accompaniment of federal occupational safety investigators during plant inspection). Turning to the specific elements of the test for purposes of the case at hand, the staffing agency's contention that the overtime is not work because it does not benefit Gotham is unpersuasive. It is plain that if Gotham were not bound to comply with the Act and instead paid its nurses straight-time wages for overtime without administrative inconvenience, all hours clocked by the nurses would `Satisfy the benefit prong of the Tennessee Coal test. It is only by subtracting from Gotham's benefit the costs of its attempted adherence to federal law that the nurses' overtime ceases to benefit Gotham. Hence, Gotham finds itself in a situation that we suppose quite common in the business world in which the revenues gained from overtime fall short of the costs incurred. Gotham's implication that unprofitable labor is not work under the Act leads us to a number of untenable conclusions; most pertinent here, an employer would be permitted to avoid the Act whenever the overtime provisions threaten success in achieving Congress' goal of curtailing overtime by bringing its cost above its benefit to the employer. Gotham also insists that it lacks the degree of control over the nurses' unauthorized shifts contemplated in the definition of work. We note, however, that Gotham is not permitted to supervise its nurses on hospital grounds at any time, including regular scheduled shifts, and possesses no less control over a nurse's activities during unauthorized shifts than at other times. The only discernible difference suggested by Gotham relates to the decision reached by the hospital and nurse without Gotham's participationthat unauthorized work be performed. Gotham's limited control over a nurse's decision to work overtime does not change the nature of the exertion that follows and thus does not bear on whether such exertion is work. Such circumstances may be relevant to the separate, question whether Gotham suffered or permitted such work, the inquiry to which we now turn.