Opinion ID: 316583
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Set-offs

Text: 8 The district court permitted set-offs against the amount due in back pay for the value of goods, including gas and supplies from the company store, furnished by Heard to his employees. As a result of these deductions the final awards to many of defendants' workers dropped below the minimum payments required by the Act. In Brennan v. Veterans Cleaning Service, Inc., 5 Cir. 1973, 482 F.2d 1362, this Court held that payroll deductions to compensate for debts owed by an employee to his employer were impermissible if they operated to reduce income below the wage floor prescribed by the FLSA. Congress' express purpose in passing the Act had been to enable a substantial portion of the American work force to maintain a minimum standard of living, see Brooklyn Savings Bank v. O'Neil, 1945, 324 U.S. 697, 706-707, 65 S.Ct. 895, 89 L.Ed. 1296; and we recognized in Veterans Cleaning that to accomplish this end, 'the minimum wage required must normally be paid 'free and clear' . . ..' 482 F.2d at 1369. 2 9 Congress has determined that the individual worker should have both the freedom and the responsibility to allocate his minimum wage among competing economic and personal interests. Defendants succeeded below in preventing the full exercise of that employee discretion, which has been mandated by the FLSA and specifically recognized by this Court. Brennan v. Veterans Cleaning Service, Inc., supra, at 1369. The FLSA decrees a minimum unconditional payment and the commands of that Act are not to be vitiated by an employer, either acting alone or through the agency of a federal court. The federal courts were not designated by the FLSA to be either collection agents or arbitrators for an employee's creditors. Their sole function and duty under the Act is to assure to the employees of a covered company a minimum level of wages. Arguments and disputations over claims against those wages are foreign to the genesis, history, interpretation, and philosophy of the Act. The only economic feud contemplated by the FLSA involves the employer's obedience to minimum wage and overtime standards. To clutter these proceedings with the minutiae of other employer-employee relationships would be antithetical to the purpose of the Act. Set-offs against back pay awards deprive the employee of the 'cash in hand' contemplated by the Act, and are therefore inappropriate in any proceeding brought to enforce the FLSA minimum wage and overtime provisions, whether the suit is initiated by individual employees or by the Secretary of Labor.