Court Opinion

ID: 9419673
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:50:52.729652+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:42:12.639958
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Murphy,
dissenting.
A proper understanding of the nature of the activities carried on in petitioner’s 48-story office building in New York City leads to the inevitable conclusion that the respondent maintenance employees, like those in Kirschbaum Co. v. Walling, 316 U. S. 517, and in Borden Co. v. Borella, post, p. 679, are engaged in occupations “necessary to the production of goods for commerce” and hence are entitled to the benefits of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
(1) Approximately 26% of the rentable area of the building is occupied by the executive offices of manufacturing and mining concerns which are concededly engaged in the production of goods for commerce. Corporate policies are formed and directed from these offices. Most of them purchase raw materials for use in the physical processes of .manufacturing. They keep in constant and close contact with the factories, supervising all of the manufacturing activities. Some of these offices draft designs and specifications for the articles produced in the factories. Business and sales departments located in these offices do work in connection with tfye distribution of these products. One office even handles parts for the machines manufactured by the company, doing repair work on the parts and packing and shipping them to out-of-state customers.
*586The case in this respect is indistinguishable from the facts in the Borden case. Here, as in the Borden case, the officers and employees working in these offices are part of the coordinated productive pattern of modern industry. The fact that none of the physical processes of manufacturing occurs in the same building is immaterial. Production requires central planning, control, supervision, purchase of raw materials, designing of products, sales promotion and the like as well as the physical, manual processes of manufacturing. These various central offices, then, are “part of an integrated effort for the production of goods,” Armour & Co. v. Wantock, 323 U. S. 126, 130. And since the maintenance employees stand in the same relation to this productive process as did the employees in the Kirschbaum case, it follows that they are engaged in occupations “necessary to the production of goods for commerce.”
The Kirschbaum case also made it clear that the provisions of the Act “expressly make its application dependent upon the character of the employees’ activities.” 316 U. S. at 524. Hence it is immaterial that the owner of the building which employs the respondent maintenance employees is not shown to have been engaged in the production of goods for commerce. As in the Kirschbaum case, it is enough if the employees are necessary to the production of' goods by tenants occupying the building in which they work.
(2) Approximately 6.5% of the rentable area of the building is occupied by concerns engaged in writing and preparing mimeographed, photographic and printed matter which is shipped in interstate commerce. One company produces between 15,000 and 20,000 pages of mimeographed materials per week, 90% of which is sent outside the state. Another tenant produces 60 magazines having national circulations. Other concerns produce large quantities of pamphlets, photographs, magazines and advertising matter for interstate shipment. *587Since telegraphic messages are “goods” within the meaning of the Act, Western Union Co. v. Lenroot, 323 U. S. 490, 502-503, it would seem clear that these magazines, pamphlets, etc. which are prepared in petitioner’s office building are likewise “goods.” And since the term “produced” includes “every kind of incidental operation preparatory to putting goods into the stream of commerce,” ibid., 503, the writing and preparation of these materials constitutes “production of goods” for interstate commerce. Here again the respondent maintenance employees are related to production in the same way as were the employees in the Kirschbaum case, thus making it clear that they are covered by the Act from this standpoint.
It is unnecessary to describe the activities of the other tenants, although it is conceded that about 58% of the total rentable area is occupied by concerns not engaged in the production of goods for commerce. It is sufficient that approximately 32.5% of the rentable area is devoted to production. The Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor has stated that he will take no enforcement action “with respect to maintenance employees in buildings in which less than 20 percent of the space is occupied by firms engaged there or elsewhere in the production of goods for commerce.” Wage and Hour Division Release, November 19, 1943, P. R.-19 (rev.). Whether 20% occupancy by such firms is a reasonable minimum is’ not in issue here. Clearly a 32.5% occupancy is so substantial as to remove any doubt that the maintenance employees devote a large part of their time to activities necessary to the production of goods for commerce. Hence they are covered by the Act.
The starting point in cases of this nature is not to decide whether the activities carried on in the office building in question satisfy some nebulous “common understanding of what is local business.” The crucial problem, rather, is to determine whether such activities constitute *588an integral part of the productive process. Once it is clear that the activities are part of the process of production of goods for interstate commerce the interstate character of the activities becomes obvious; and it follows that occupations necessary to those activities partake of their interstate flavor. Neither attenuated analysis nor scholastic logic is necessary to understand the scope and coordination of the modern productive pattern and the integral part played by those who manage and direct the physical processes of production. To apply the Act in light of elementary economic facts is not beyond the ability of judges or beyond the intention of Congress.
Congress plainly intended “to leave local business to the protection of the states,” Walling v. Jacksonville Paper Co., 317 U. S. 564, 570, when it enacted this statute. But there is no indication that it intended to divide the process of producing goods for interstate commerce into interstate and local segments, applying the statute only to the former. And when Congress said that employees “necessary to the production” of goods for commerce were to be included within the Act, it meant just that, without limitation to those who were necessary only to the physical manufacturing aspects of production. Under such circumstances it is our duty to recognize economic reality in interpreting and applying the mandate of the people.
Mr. Justice Black, Mr. Justice Reed and Mr. Justice Rutledge join in this dissent.