1. No principle of law precluded a determination that waiting
time was working time under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Armour & Co. v. Wantock, ante, p.
323 U. S. 126. P.
323 U. S.
136.
2. Whether time spent on the employer's premises (or in hailing
distance) by fire guards subject to call was working time under the
Fair Labor Standards Act is a question of fact to be resolved by
appropriate findings of the trial court. P.
323 U. S.
136.
3. Although the rulings, interpretations, and opinions of the
Administrator under the Fair Labor Standards Act do not control
judicial decision, they do constitute a body of experience and
informed judgment to which courts and litigants may properly resort
for guidance. P.
323 U. S.
140.
136 F.2d 112 reversed.
Certiorari, 322 U.S. 723, to review the affirmance of a
judgment, 53 F. Supp. 1020, denying recovery in a suit under the
Fair Labor Standards Act for overtime, liquidated damages, and
attorney's fees.
Page 323 U. S. 135
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON delivered the opinion of the Court.
Seven employees of the Swift and Company packing plant at Fort
Worth, Texas, brought an action under the Fair Labor Standards Act
to recover overtime, liquidated damages, and attorneys' fees
totalling approximately $77,000. The District Court rendered
judgment denying this claim wholly, and the Circuit Court of
Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed. 136 F.2d 112.
It is not denied that the daytime employment of these persons
was working time within the Act. Two were engaged in general fire
hall duties and maintenance of firefighting equipment of the Swift
plant. The others operated elevators or acted as relief men in fire
duties. They worked from 7:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., with a half-hour
lunch period, five days a week. They were paid weekly salaries.
Under their oral agreement of employment, however, petitioners
undertook to stay in the fire hall on the Company premises, or
within hailing distance, three and a half to four nights a week.
This involved no task except to answer alarms, either because of
fire or because the sprinkler was set off for some other reason. No
fires occurred during the period in issue, the alarms were rare,
and the time required for their answer rarely exceeded an hour. For
each alarm answered, the employees were
Page 323 U. S. 136
paid, in addition to their fixed compensation, an agreed amount,
fifty cents at first, and later sixty-four cents. The Company
provided a brick fire hall equipped with steam heat and
air-conditioned rooms. It provided sleeping quarters, a pool table,
a domino table, and a radio. The men used their time in sleep or
amusement as they saw fit, except that they were required to stay
in or close by the fire hall and be ready to respond to alarms. It
is stipulated that
"they agreed to remain in the fire hall and stay in it or within
hailing distance, subject to call, in event of fire or other
casualty, but were not required to perform any specific tasks
during these periods of time, except in answering alarms."
The trial court found the evidentiary facts as stipulated; it
made no findings of fact, as such, as to whether, under the
arrangement of the parties and the circumstances of this case,
which, in some respects, differ from those of the
Armour
case (
ante, p.
323 U. S. 126),
the fire hall duty or any part thereof constituted working time. It
said, however, as a "conclusion of law" that
"the time plaintiffs spent in the fire hall subject to call to
answer fire alarms does not constitute hours worked for which
overtime compensation is due them under the Fair Labor Standards
Act, as interpreted by the Administrator and the Courts,"
and in its opinion observed, "of course, we know pursuing such
pleasurable occupations or performing such personal chores does not
constitute work." The Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed.
For reasons set forth in the
Armour case, decided
herewith, we hold that no principle of law found either in the
statute or in Court decisions precludes waiting time from also
being working time. We have not attempted to, and we cannot, lay
down a legal formula to resolve cases so varied in their facts as
are the many situations in which employment involves waiting time.
Whether, in a concrete case, such time falls within or without the
Act is a question of fact to be resolved by appropriate findings of
the trial
Page 323 U. S. 137
court.
Walling v. Jacksonville Paper Co., 317 U.
S. 564,
317 U. S. 572.
This involves scrutiny and construction of the agreements between
the particular parties, appraisal of their practical construction
of the working agreement by conduct, consideration of the nature of
the service, and its relation to the waiting time, and all of the
surrounding circumstances. Facts may show that the employee was
engaged to wait, or they way show that he waited to be engaged. His
compensation may cover both waiting and task, or only performance
of the task itself. Living quarters may in some situations be
furnished as a facility of the task and in another as a part of its
compensation. The law does not impose an arrangement upon the
parties. It imposes upon the courts the task of finding what the
arrangement was.
We do not minimize the difficulty of such an inquiry where the
arrangements of the parties have not contemplated the problem posed
by the statute. But it does not differ in nature or in the
standards to guide judgment from that which frequently confronts
courts where they must find retrospectively the effect of contracts
as to matters which the parties failed to anticipate or explicitly
to provide for.
Congress did not utilize the services of an administrative
agency to find facts and to determine in the first instance whether
particular cases fall within or without the Act. Instead, it put
this responsibility on the courts.
Kirschbaum v. Walling,
316 U. S. 517,
316 U. S. 523.
But it did create the office of Administrator, impose upon him a
variety of duties, endow him with powers to inform himself of
conditions in industries and employments subject to the Act, and
put on him the duties of bringing injunction actions to restrain
violations. Pursuit of his duties has accumulated a considerable
experience in the problems of ascertaining working time in
employments involving periods of inactivity and a knowledge of the
customs
Page 323 U. S. 138
prevailing in reference to their solution. From these he is
obliged to reach conclusions as to conduct without the law, so that
he should seek injunctions to stop it, and that within the law, so
that he has no call to interfere. He has set forth his views of the
application of the Act under different circumstances in an
interpretative bulletin and in informal rulings. They provide a
practical guide to employers and employees as to how the office
representing the public interest in its enforcement will seek to
apply it. Wage and Hour Division, Interpretative Bulletin No.
13.
The Administrator thinks the problems presented by inactive duty
require a flexible solution, rather than the all-in or all-out
rules respectively urged by the parties in this case, and his
Bulletin endeavors to suggest standards and examples to guide in
particular situations. In some occupations, it says, periods of
inactivity are not properly counted as working time even though the
employee is subject to call. Examples are an operator of a small
telephone exchange where the switchboard is in her home and she
ordinarily gets several hours of uninterrupted sleep each night; or
a pumper of a stripper well or watchman of a lumber camp during the
off season, who may be on duty twenty-four hours a day but
ordinarily "has a normal night's sleep, has ample time in which to
eat his meals, and has a certain amount of time for relaxation and
entirely private pursuits." Exclusion of all such hours the
Administrator thinks may be justified. In general, the answer
depends
"upon the degree to which the employee is free to engage in
personal activities during periods of idleness when he is subject
to call and the number of consecutive hours that the employee is
subject to call without being required to perform active work."
"Hours worked are not limited to the time spent in active labor,
but include time given by the employee to the employer. . . ."
Page 323 U. S. 139
The facts of this case do not fall within any of the specific
examples given, but the conclusion of the Administrator, as
expressed in the brief
amicus curiae, is that the general
tests which he has suggested point to the exclusion of sleeping and
eating time of these employees from the work-week and the inclusion
of all other on-call time: although the employees were required to
remain on the premises during the entire time, the evidence shows
that they were very rarely interrupted in their normal sleeping and
eating time, and these are pursuits of a purely private nature
which would presumably occupy the employees' time whether they were
on duty or not, and which apparently could be pursued adequately
and comfortably in the required circumstances; the rest of the time
is different, because there is nothing in the record to suggest
that, even though pleasurably spent, it was spent in the ways the
men would have chosen had they been free to do so.
There is no statutory provision as to what, if any, deference
courts should pay to the Administrator's conclusions. And while we
have given them notice, we have had no occasion to try to prescribe
their influence. The rulings of this Administrator are not reached
as a result of hearing adversary proceedings in which he finds
facts from evidence and reaches conclusions of law from findings of
fact. They are not, of course, conclusive, even in the cases with
which they directly deal, much less in those to which they apply
only by analogy. They do not constitute an interpretation of the
Act or a standard for judging factual situations which binds a
district court's processes, as an authoritative pronouncement of a
higher court might do. But the Administrator's policies are made in
pursuance of official duty, based upon more specialized experience
and broader investigations and information than is likely to come
to a judge in a particular case. They do determine the policy which
will guide applications for enforcement
Page 323 U. S. 140
by injunction on behalf of the Government. Good administration
of the Act and good judicial administration alike require that the
standards of public enforcement and those for determining private
rights shall be at variance only where justified by very good
reasons. The fact that the Administrator's policies and standards
are not reached by trial in adversary form does not mean that they
are not entitled to respect. This Court has long given
considerable, and in some cases decisive, weight to Treasury
Decisions and to interpretative regulations of the Treasury and of
other bodies that were not of adversary origin.
We consider that the rulings, interpretations, and opinions of
the Administrator under this Act, while not controlling upon the
courts by reason of their authority, do constitute a body of
experience and informed judgment to which courts and litigants may
properly resort for guidance. The weight of such a judgment in a
particular case will depend upon the thoroughness evident in its
consideration, the validity of its reasoning, its consistency with
earlier and later pronouncements, and all those factors which give
it power to persuade, if lacking power to control.
The courts in the
Armour case weighed the evidence in
the particular case in the light of the Administrator's rulings and
reached a result consistent therewith. The evidence in this case,
in some respects, such as the understanding as to separate
compensation for answering alarms, is different. Each case must
stand on its own facts. But, in this case, although the District
Court referred to the Administrator's Bulletin, its evaluation and
inquiry were apparently restricted by its notion that waiting time
may not be work, an understanding of the law which we hold to be
erroneous. Accordingly, the judgment is reversed and the cause
remanded for further proceedings consistent herewith.
Reversed.