Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Company/Dissent Burton

by Frank Murphy

United States Supreme Court

328 U.S. 680

ANDERSON et al.  v.  MT. CLEMENS POTTERY CO.

 Argued: Jan. 29, 1946. --- Decided: June 10, 1946

Mr. Justice BURTON dissenting, with whom Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER concurs.

The opinion of the Court in this case has gone far toward affirming the Circuit Court of Appeals. I believe it should go the rest of the way.

This Court has agreed largely with the Court of Appeals in holding that the District Court was in error in not accepting them aster's findings of fact in the face of Rule 53(e)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which requires that: 'In an action to be tried without a jury the court shall accept the master's findings of fact unless clearly erroneous.' 28 U.S.C. following § 723c, 28 U.S.C.A. following section 723c.

This Court, accordingly, agrees that the trial court must accept as findings of fact in this case that the productive work performed by the employees began and ended at the regularly scheduled hours of work, on the even quarter-hours; that the time clocks were not controlling in establishing the exact minute of starting or stopping work; that the time spent in punching time clocks did not constitute compensable work; and that the 'waiting time,' if any, before and after the shift periods was not compensable time.

This Court also agrees that the District Court was in error in creating a formula of compensation not in accordance with the findings of the master.

The only questions remaining are whether the moments spent in walking from the time clocks to the employees' respective places of productive work within the plant and the minutes sometimes spent by some of the employees in miscellaneous 'preliminary activities' before the scheduled starting times must be added, as a matter of law 'regardless of contrary custom or contract,' to the compensatory time of 'the statutory week,' and, if so, how such additional time can be proved to have been so used in order to make it the basis for additional compensation.

The master determined that the time spent in walking from the time clocks to the places of work was not compensable working time in view of the established custom in the industry and in the plant. Moreover, the employees were free to take whatever course through the plant they desired and to stop off at any point to talk with other employees or to do whatever else they liked. Some workers came to the time clocks as late as one minute before the time to reach their place of productive work. The so-called 'preliminary activities' are identified in this case as those of 'putting on aprons and overalls, removing shirts, taping or greasing arms, putting on finger cots, preparing the equipment for productive work, turning on switches for lights and machinery, opening windows and assembling and sharpening tools.' The master found that the employees had not offered proof of the time used for these purposes with a sufficient degree of reliability or accuracy for it to become the basis for recovery of overtime compensation. The employer would have still greater difficulty in keeping an accurate record of the time spent by each employee in such activities. These activities are of such a nature that the knowledge of them and the time spent in doing them rests particularly with the employees themselves. Such activities are of quite a different character from those made the basis of compensable time in the coal mine portal-to-portal cases. Tennessee Coal, Iron & R. Co. v. Muscoda Local, 321 U.S. 590, 64 S.Ct. 698, 88 L.Ed. 949, 152 A.L.R. 1014; Jewell Ridge Corp. v. Local No. 6167, N.M.W.A., 325 U.S. 161, 65 S.Ct. 1063, 89 L.Ed. 1534.

Some idea of the shortness of the time and the smallness of the compensation involved in the 'preliminary activities,' in comparison with the cumbersomeness of any system for accurately recording the time spent in doing them, is apparent from the formula to which the District Court resorted in attempting to reach its solution of the difficulty. Under that formula, for example, the District Court found no basis for compensation for such activities after the scheduled quitting time. Compensable time spent in such activities was limited to a short period before the schedule hours of beginning productive work in the morning and again on resuming work after lunch. Employees were allowed, or encouraged, to come to the plant 14 minutes ahead of the quarter hour at which their scheduled productive work began. The District Court et imated that on an average seven minutes should be allowed, each morning, for punching a time clock and walking from it to the employee's place of productive work. As to the 'walking time' the court said, 'the preparation even after punching the clock wouldn't take more than one or one and a half minutes and to the farthest point in the plant from the time clock wouldn't take more than 2 minutes.' 60 F.Supp. 146, 149. If an employee came to the plant 14 minutes ahead of time, this left a maximum of seven minutes, plus 'walking time,' as the basis for a compensatory claim. The compensatory time in many cases would be much less. Similarly, under the District Court formula, employees returning to work after lunch were estimated to consume five minutes in punching the clock and walking to their places of productive work. This would leave a maximum of nine minutes, plus 'walking time.' At that hour of the day the workers already would be in their work clothes and there rarely would be more than a minute or two required for the preliminary activities for which compensation was claimed.

The amounts at issue, therefore, might not average as much as five to ten minutes a day a person and would not apply at all to many of the employees. None of this time would have been spent at productive work. The futility of requiring an employer to record these minutes and the unfairness of penalizing him, for failure to do a futile thing, by imposing arbitrary allowances for 'overtime' and liquidated damages is apparent.

While conditions vary widely and there may be cases where time records of 'preliminary activities' or 'walking time' may be appropriate, yet here we have a case where the obvious, long established and simple way to compensate an employee for such activities is to recognize those activities in the rate of pay for the particular job. These items are appropriate for consideration in collective bargaining.

To sustain the position of the Court in requiring these additional moments to be recorded and computed as overtime, it is necessary to hold that Congress, in using the word 'workweek,' meant to give that word a statutory meaning different from its commonly understood reference to the working hours between 'starting' and 'quitting' time-or from 'whistle to whistle.' There is no evidence that Congress meant to redefine this common term and to set aside long established contracts or customs which had absorbed in the rate of pay of the respective jobs recognition of whatever preliminary activities might be required of the worker by that particular job. For example, if the plant be one located at an inconvenient place, or if the workers have to change into working clothes at the plant, or have to grease or tape their arms before going to work, these are items peculiar to the job, and compensation for them easily can be made in the rate of pay per hour, per week or per piece, and all special stop-watch recording of them eliminated.

In interpreting 'workweek' as applied to the industries of America, it is important to consider the term as applicable not merely to large and organized industries where activities may be formalized and easily measured on a split-second basis. The term must be applied equally to the hundreds of thousands of small businesses and small plants employing less than 200, and often less than 50 workers, where the recording of occasional minutes of preliminary activities and walking time would be highly impractical and the penalties of liquidated damages for a neglect to do so would be unreasonable. Such a universal requirement of recording would lead to innumerable unnecessary minor controversies between employers and employees. 'Workweek' is a simple term used by Congress in accordance with the common understanding of it. For this Court to include in it items that have been customarily and generally absorbed in the rate of pay but excluded from measured working time is not justified in the absence of affirmative legislative actio.

For these reasons, I believe that the judgment of the Court of Appeals should be affirmed.

Notes