Court Opinion

ID: 9498646
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:23:47.543309+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:58.501422
License: Public Domain

PREGERSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Department of Labor regulations allow employees to count hours of paid vacation as “hours of service,” the currency in which hours are counted for pension purposes. The majority holds that construction laborers cannot count their vacation benefit as “hours of service,” because their vacation benefit comes from a trust fund as a lump sum of money, not from an *1125employer as a set amount of vacation time. I cannot support this outcome.
The crux of my disagreement with the majority comes down to whether the payments union members receive from the vacation trust are vacation benefits intended to approximate “traditional” paid vacations received by employees in other industries, or whether the vacation trust is an involuntary savings plan akin to a “Christmas Club.” I believe the vacation trust documents are clear on this point. Article II of the Trust Agreement states that the trust fund is intended as “a fund for the payment of paid vacations.” The summary plan document circulated by the vacation trust fund to union members touted this program as a “vacation check” that “materially assists [an employee] in defraying the expenses of a vacation should [the employee] decide to take one.” Thus, I cannot agree with the majority that Mora’s argument is much ado over an unfortunate label. See Maj. Op. at 1122. Defendant’s present assertions to the contrary, see Maj. Op. at 1123, do not alter the fact that vacation trust payments were consistently marketed as a paid vacation benefit and should carry the consequences that normally follow paid vacations.
Once it is shown that these vacation trust payments are intended to approximate vacation benefits provided to employees in other industries, the Defendant’s remaining arguments fall away. The lump sum of money received by union construction laborers can easily be translated into a quantity of time, and in fact, the regulations provide for this calculation. See 29 C.F.R. § 2530.200b-2(b)(2). The differences between the vacation trust payment and a traditional vacation benefit — i.e., the fact that payments come from a trust rather than from the employer, the timing of tax with-holding, and the fact that payments are doled out at regular intervals rather than at the time vacation is taken— can be attributed to the nature of the construction industry and the short-lived relationship between construction employers and laborers, not to any substantive difference between the construction laborer’s paid vacation and the paid vacation of other employees. “Double counting” of hours can be avoided by allowing union members to show that they did take some period of time away from work; indeed, it should hardly be a problem for transitory construction laborers to show that they did not work a full 52 weeks in a year.
Constructions laborers work at many job sites for multiple employers over the course of a year. Accommodations have been negotiated between unions and construction employers to ensure that these transitory workers are provided with paid vacation benefits similar to those provided to employees in other industries. I believe we should give effect to their agreement and treat the paid vacation received by construction laborers as we would treat paid vacation received by an employee in any other industry.
Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.