Court Opinion

ID: 9425192
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:02.266695+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:53.971043
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice White,
dissenting.
It is undisputed that for the minimum wage and maximum hour requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 52 Stat. 1060, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 201 et seq., to apply to all the employees involved in this case, they must be employed in an “enterprise engaged in com*522merce or in the production of goods for commerce.” 1 29 U. S. C. §§203 (s), 206, and 207. An “enterprise” for the purpose of the Act “means the related activities performed (either through unified operation or common control) by any person or persons for a common business purpose . . . .” Id,., § 203 (r). An enterprise, however, does not include the related activities performed for the enterprise by an independent contractor or other specified arrangements, including otherwise independent establishments occupying premises leased to them by the same person. Ibid.
But, for an “enterprise” to be “engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce,” the enterprise must have an “annual gross volume of sales made or business done” in an amount not less than the specified statutory minimum. Id., § 203 (s)(1). Congress did not intend to cover all establishments by expanding the coverage of the Act through the enterprise approach. Instead, it drew an economic line. “It is the line which the Congress must draw in determining who shall and who shall not be covered by a minimum wage.” S. Rep. No. 145, 87th Cong., 1st Sess., 5. Nor was the definition of enterprise intended to swallow up the exclusion of small businesses. Related activities conducted by separate businesses would be considered a part of an enterprise only “where they are joined either through unified opera*523tion or common control into a unified business system or economic unit to serve a common business purpose.” Id., at 41. And the express exemptions provided in § 203 (r) from the enterprise concept, the Senate Report said, would “insure that a small local independent business, not in itself large enough to come within the new coverage, will not become subject to the act by being considered a part of a large enterprise with which it has business dealings.” Ibid.
In the case before us, nine separately and independently owned buildings leasing space to tenants employed the same management company as agent to recommend tenants, collect rents, hire, fire, and supervise employees, and maintain and operate the buildings. The Court holds that even if none of the individual building owners would itself generate gross rentals in sufficient amount to be covered by the Act, the buildings and the management company collectively are an enterprise with collective gross rentals in excess of the statutory minimums and hence covered by the Act.2 Because it appears to me that the Court is applying the concept of enterprise in a way which ignores the economic limitations in the Act and the congressional intention they represent, I respectfully dissent.
There is no connection between these separately owned buildings other than the fact that they employ the same management company to represent them. They have a common managing agent, but that agent is separately accountable to, and must follow the perhaps diverse directions of, each of its principals. They have no unified operation, do not constitute a unified business system or an economic unit, and surely do not serve a common *524business purpose. Hence there is no “enterprise” within the meaning of the Act which covers only those “related activities” performed through unified operation or common control “for a common business purpose.”
As I have indicated, Congress was not unaware of the possibility of stretching the concept “enterprise” beyond its proper bounds and sought to guard against it. The Senate Committee said: “Thus the mere fact that a group of independently owned and operated stores join together to combine their purchasing activities or to run combined advertising will not for these reasons mean that their activities are performed through unified operation or common control and they will not for these reasons be considered a part of the same 'enterprise.’ ” S. Rep. No. 145, 87th Cong., 1st Sess., 42. Common agents, therefore, are not sufficient to convert otherwise independent entities into an enterprise.
The Committee also said: “There may be a number of different types of arrangements established in such cases. The key in each case may be found in the answer to the question, 'Who receives the profits, suffers the losses, sets the wages and working conditions of employees, or otherwise manages the business in those respects which are the common attributes of an independent businessman operating a business for profit?’ ” Ibid.
Under this standard, there can be no question that the buildings are separate economic units and should be treated as such. The manager receives merely a commission for his services. The managing agent manages, but is subject to direction by his principal. The income and expenses for each building are accounted for separately. The owner of each building receives the profits and suffers the losses, if any. Each owner sets the wages and working conditions for each building in the sense that, although the manager negotiates such matters, he negotiates under instructions, and it is each owner who *525must approve them. Each building carries a separate employer identification number. Employees are hired with respect to each building, and supplies and other items necessary for the operation of the buildings are purchased separately for each building. Should a particular building terminate its relationship with the manager, the building employees remain with the building.
The Arnheim & Neely agency unquestionably was an “employer” insofar as its relationship to each of the buildings was concerned, for 29 U. S. C. § 203 (d) defines the term employer as including “any person acting directly or indirectly in the interest of an employer in relation to an employee . . . .” But this is a far cry from concluding that the separate buildings and their common agent constitute an enterprise engaged in commerce.3
Unquestionably, it is the individual owner who bears the burden of the Act and if any one of them, or each of them, individually has gross sales less than the jurisdictional minimums mentioned in the Act, construing the work “enterprise” concept as the majority does distorts clear congressional intent.

 As discussed in the majority opinion, the Act as passed in 1938, 52 Stat. 1060, covered only employees “engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce.” The 1961 amendments, 75 Stat. 65-67, 69, greatly broadened the scope of the Act by adding the “enterprise” concept to cover those employees not directly engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce but eipployed by an “enterprise” that was. Therefore, those employees in this case not engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, must belong to an “enterprise” so engaged, if they are to be covered.

 If I agreed that the building owners and their common agent were an “enterprise,” I would also agree that the cumulative gross rentals would be the proper measure of coverage.

 This is demonstrated by 29 CFR § 779.203, which provides that the “terms [‘employer,’ ‘establishment,’ and ‘enterprise’] are not synonymous.”