Court Opinion

ID: 9742333
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:10:58.811645+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:31.214322
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE SIMON, dissenting: The characterizations found in the collective bargaining agreement make the majority opinion a persuasive one, but it overlooks some of the agreement’s significant provisions. Although described in the agreement as a “travel time allowance,” the extra pay which the employees in the position of the claimant’s husband received and on which the majority decision is based had nothing to do with travel. The employees were not paid for either the time or the expense of commuting. Thus, the authorities which the court cites to uphold the Commission are not helpful in dealing with this case; they involve different factual situations. The collective bargaining agreement provided that employees who, like the decedent here, reported directly to their work area traveled “to such work location on their own time and at their own expense.” The provision the majority relied on did not render this section of the agreement inconsequential for the purposes of this case, because that provision was about compensation, not travel. Both provisions could be, and should have been, read in pari materia — the first to determine if the decedent’s travel was in the course of his employment, the second to determine how much pay the decedent had earned. The compensation provision set a compensation floor— a “safety net“ — for employees who were called in to work outside their normal hours. The amount of the minimum varied according to a sliding scale: If the employee worked: —Less than two straight time hours as measured by overtime pay, —More than two straight time hours but less than eight, as measured by overtime pay, —More than eight hours, The employee received: —Two hours straight time pay plus a travel allowance of two hours straight time pay. —The overtime rate for actual hours worked plus a travel allowance of two hours straight time pay. —The overtime rate for actual hours worked without a travel allowance. It bears emphasis that the employee who ended up working more than eight hours received no “travel time allowance.” The record gives no clue as to why the agreement characterized the extra pay as a “travel time allowance” when in fact the pay was unrelated to travel; under the circumstances it is misleading to reach a decision on the basis of that characterization. Some employees got the extra pay while others who traveled the identical distance in identical time did not. The balance hung not on the travel distance or travel time, but on the length of time spent at the plant. No employee called in to work outside of normal schedules could count on being reimbursed for travel, since only when the work was completed and the number of hours the employee had worked was known could the employee determine if the allowance would be paid. The decedent, for example, did not know on the morning of the accident how long he was going to work. What he was entitled to receive was not, therefore, a “travel time allowance.” The workers did not receive pay for the time or expense of traveling; instead they were paid bonuses for the disruption of their personal schedules. As the court notes, the company assured them of a minimum amount of pay if they came into work on their day off, no matter how little work had to be done. Once that minimum was earned, the bonus was eliminated, just as the premium paid under the agreement to employees for work performed on Sundays was eliminated if the employee was receiving overtime. In Tavel v. Bechtel Corp. (1966), 242 Md. 299, 219 A.2d 43, the employer paid the claimant $1.20 per day and called it, as did Commonwealth Edison here, compensation for “travel time.” In fact, the payment was a fringe benefit used to induce out-of-State workers to come to work for the employer, with no relation to the actual cost of or time spent in traveling. Compensation was denied for an employee injured in an automobile accident on his way to work; the court held that the journey was not part of the services for which the employee was hired. Like the court in Tavel, this court should not feel bound by the way the parties characterized the compensation. To the extent that the Industrial Commission found as a matter of fact that the pay was compensation for the time spent in traveling, its conclusion was contrary to the manifest weight of the evidence, for all the evidence supports only the opposite conclusion. With the evidence viewed realistically instead of through the distortion created by the language employed in the agreement, I see no basis for holding the employer liable. Illinois cases have held that, unless the employee is on a special errand for the employer, the liability of the employer ceases when the employee has left the premises. (Public Service Co. v. Industrial Com. (1938), 370 Ill. 334, 335; Warren v. Industrial Com. (1975), 61 Ill. 2d 373.) Under the terms of the agreement, the deceased here was not killed on company time. He was on no special errand because travel was not a substantial part of the service the Industrial Commission determined he performed. He had left work and was about his own business. Cases like Sjostrom v. Sproule (1965), 33 Ill. 2d 40, have found an accident arising out of the course of employment only because the accident occurred during travel which was due to the exigencies of the job and was under the control of the employer. No such exigencies or control appear in this case. A recovery against the employer of $252,760.23 for what was an ordinary, though tragic, automobile accident was not justified. I therefore respectfully dissent.