Court Opinion

ID: 9419771
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:51:26.215825+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:20.564590
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
concurring.
The decisions of this Court leave no doubt that a man’s time may, as a matter of law, be in the service of another *371though he be inactive. E. g., Armour & Co. v. Wantock, 323 U. S. 126. This is, practically speaking, the ordinary situation of employment in a “stand-by” capacity. United States v. Local 807, 315 U. S. 521, 535. The basis of a back-pay order under the National Labor Relations Act, 49 Stat. 449, 29 U. S. C. § 151, is precisely that. When the employer is liable for back pay, he is so liable because under the circumstances, though he has illegally discharged the employee, he still absorbs his time. Phelps Dodge Corp. v. Labor Board, 313 U. S. 177. In short, an employer must pay wages although, in violation of law, he has subjected his employee to enforced idleness. Since such compensation is in fact paid as wages, it is a plain disregard of the law for the.Social Security Board not to include such payments among the employees’ wages. Neither the terms of the Social Security Act, 49 Stat. 620, 53 Stat. 1360, 42 U. S. C. § 301, nor the implications of policy, comparable to some aspects of the Railway Labor Act, 44 Stat. 577, 48 Stat. 926, 48 Stat. 1185, 49 Stat. 1921, 54 Stat. 785, 45 U. S. C. § 151, give the Board judicially unreviewable authority to exclude from wages what as a matter of law are wages. And so I concur in the decision of the Court.