Employees of a large construction contractor engaged in
constructing a dam solely to increase the reservoir capacity of the
local water system of a city and its vicinity, all within a single
State, are not "engaged in commerce or in the production of goods
for commerce" or in "any closely related process or occupation
directly essential to the production thereof," within the meaning
of §§ 3(j) and 7(a) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, as amended in
1949, and, therefore, they are not covered by the overtime
requirements of the Act, even though a substantial part of the
water will be used by producers of goods for interstate commerce
and an insignificant part by interstate instrumentalities. Pp.
362 U. S.
310-321.
262 F.2d 46, affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER delivered the opinion of the Court.
Once again we are presented with a nice question concerning the
scope of the Fair Labor Standards Act, as amended. 63 Stat. 912, 29
U.S.C. § 20. The respondent, a construction contractor, was engaged
by the Lower Nueces River Water Supply District (hereafter to be
called the District) to construct a dam and impounding facilities
on the lower Nueces River in Texas at a cost of about $6,000,000,
in order to increase roughly tenfold the District's then-existing
reservoir capacity. The dam is not a multi-purpose project; its
sole purpose is to
Page 362 U. S. 311
create an expanded reservoir for the District. The water
impounded by the District is supplied to consumers locally, within
the State of Texas. The site of the new dam was chosen 1,400 feet
downstream from the old, with the expectation that, upon completion
of the new construction, the old dam would be inundated, and thus
replaced by the greatly expanded reservoir. In the interim until
completion, the old facilities could serve to assure a continuing
water supply.
The District, though for some purposes an independent
governmental agency under Texas law, may here be dealt with simply
as the water supply system of the included City of Corpus Christi.
Its contract with the City requires it to supply the City with the
entire water output; and the City, in turn, agrees to operate and
maintain the completed dam and impounding facilities and to supply
water to consumers within the District, but outside city limits. It
is conceded that between 40% and 50% of all water consumption from
the system is accounted for by industrial (as distinguished from
residential, commercial, hospital, municipal and other) users, most
of whom produce goods for commerce, and that water is essential to
their operations. Nor is it contested that an unspecified amount of
the water supplied by the District is consumed by facilities and
instrumentalities of commerce.
It is agreed that as to the employees here involved -- those
actually engaged in construction work on the dam -- the respondent
failed to comply with the requirements of § 7 of the Act, if it is
applicable. [
Footnote 1]
On the basis of its applicability, the Secretary of Labor sought
an injunction in the United States District Court for the Southern
District of Texas. That court granted
Page 362 U. S. 312
the injunction, on two grounds of coverage: (1) since water from
the system is supplied to facilities and instrumentalities of
commerce, those engaged in building the dam are engaged in the
production of goods -- water -- for commerce; and (2) since the
water supplied is essential to industries in Corpus Christi
producing goods for commerce, construction of the dam is an
occupation "closely related" and "directly essential" to the
production of goods for commerce. While the District Court conceded
"that Congress intended to narrow the scope of coverage" by the
1949 amendment of the statutory definition of "produced" in § 3(j),
63 Stat. 911, [
Footnote 2] it
concluded that this employment remained within the coverage of the
Act.
On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed.
262 F.2d 546, 550. It disposed of the first ground of the District
Court's decision by holding that the building of a dam could not
itself constitute the production of goods for commerce, whatever
the use to which the impounded water might be put. In disposing of
the second, it invoked a rule that "those engaged in building a
plant to be used for the manufacturing of goods do not even come
within . . . the . . . statutory definition. . . ." It concluded
that, under such a rule, there could be no coverage of employees
engaged in construction of a facility which was not to engage in,
but merely to support, the manufacture of goods for commerce. It
concluded
Page 362 U. S. 313
further that the "remoteness" of these jobs from production
justified their exclusion from coverage. Both conclusions reflected
its general view that "the amendment of 1949 made even more
restrictive the definition of production of goods" than it was
under the Act of 1938, when it substituted the words "directly
essential" for the word "necessary" and added the requirement that
the employment be "closely related" to production.
We brought the case here, 361 U.S. 807, because of an asserted
conflict between circuits.
See Chambers Construction Co. v.
Mitchell, 233 F.2d 717, and
Mitchell v. Chambers
Construction Co., 214 F.2d 515.
The court below, in applying its rule excluding "construction,"
relied on our per curiam decision in
Murphey v. Reed, 335
U.S. 865, and distinguished the more detailed decision in
Mitchell v. C. W. Vollmer & Co., 349 U.
S. 427, which expressly rejected the "new construction"
rule and held construction of a new lock on the Gulf Intracoastal
Waterway to be covered employment. It did so by holding that
Vollmer concerned only coverage under the "in commerce"
provision of the Act. The
Vollmer decision cannot be so
confined. It rejected an inflexible "new construction" rule, which
had developed in cases under the Federal Employers' Liability Act,
see 349 U.S. at
349 U. S. 429,
349 U. S.
431-432, as inconsistent with the more pragmatic test of
coverage under the Fair Labor Standards Act. As early as
Kirschbaum Co. v. Walling, 316 U.
S. 517, we recognized that the penetrating and elusive
duty which this Act casts upon the courts to define in particular
cases the less than constitutional reach of its scope cannot be
adequately discharged by talismanic or abstract tests, embodied in
tags or formulas. No exclusion of construction work from coverage
can be derived from the per curiam disposition of
Murphey v.
Reed, supra. There, as here, whether construction work is
covered depends upon all the circumstances of the relation of the
particular activity
Page 362 U. S. 314
to "commerce" in the statutory sense and setting, the question
to which we now turn.
By confining the Act to employment "in commerce or in the
production of goods for commerce," Congress has impliedly left to
the States a domain for regulation. For want of a provision for an
administrative determination, by an agency like the National Labor
Relations Board, the primary responsibility has been vested in
courts to apply, and so to give content to, the guiding yet
undefined and imprecise phrases by which Congress has designated
the boundaries of that domain.
Before 1949, the boundary of "production" coverage was indicated
by the statutory requirement that, to be included, an activity not
"in" production must be "necessary" to it. 52 Stat. 1061. The
interaction and interdependence of the processes and functions of
the industrial society within which these definitions must be
applied could easily lead courts to find few activities that were
discernibly related to production not to be "necessary" to it in a
logical sense of that requirement. The statute, as illuminated by
its history,
see Kirschbaum Co. v. Walling, supra, at
316 U. S. 522,
demanded that such merely logical deduction be eschewed. Courts
were to be on the alert "not to absorb by adjudication essentially
local activities that Congress did not see fit to take over by
legislation."
10 East 40th St. Bldg. v. Callus,
325 U. S. 578,
325 U. S.
582-583.
In
Kirschbaum Co. v. Walling, supra, we added what was
deemed a compelled gloss to suggest the limitations of "necessary."
We found that the jobs of building maintenance employees, ranging
in responsibility from electrician to porter, of a loft building
locally owned but tenanted by production facilities of producers
for commerce, had "such a close and immediate tie with the process
of production for commerce, and [were] therefore so much an
essential part of it," that the employees' occupations
Page 362 U. S. 315
were "necessary" to production. In
Borden Co. v.
Borella, 325 U. S. 679,
precisely the same formulation expressed our conclusion that
maintenance employees of a producer-owned office building which was
tenanted in part by the producer's central offices, but not by any
production facilities, were also within the Act's coverage. In
10 East 40th St. Bldg. v. Callus, 325 U.
S. 578, however, maintenance employees of an office
building were held not to be covered. Although the building
contained offices of some producers, it was locally owned, held out
for general tenancy, and in fact tenanted by a miscellany of
tenants. Regardful of the governing principle that coverage turns
upon the nature of the employees' duties, and not upon the nature,
local or interstate, of the employer's general business, we held
the case distinguishable from
Borden and
Kirschbaum because the employment, since part of an
enterprise which "spontaneously satisfies the common understanding
of what is local business," was itself sufficiently different,
despite identical employee duties, from prior cases to justify
regarding it as separate from the "necessary parts of a commercial
process" which are within the Act. These decisions and distinctions
were not exercises in lexicography. No niceties in phrasing or
formula of words could do service for judgment, could dispense with
painstaking appraisal of all the variant elements in the different
situations presented by successive cases in light of the purpose of
Congress to limit coverage short of the exercise by it of its full
power under the Commerce Clause.
While attempted formulas of the relationship to production
required for coverage cannot furnish automatic or spontaneous
answers to specific problems of application as they arise in their
protean diversity, general principles of the Act's scope afford
direction of inquiry by defining the broad bounds within which
decision must move. In
Kirschbaum Co. v. Walling, supra,
we found
Page 362 U. S. 316
that limits on coverage cannot be understood merely in terms of
the social purposes of the Act, in light of which any limitations
must appear inconsistent. For the Act also manifests the competing
concern of Congress to avoid undue displacement of state regulation
of activities of a dominantly local character. Accommodation of
these interests was sought by the device of confinement of coverage
to employment in activities of traditionally national concern. The
focus of coverage became "commerce" not in the broadest
constitutional sense, but in the limited sense of § 3(b) of the
statute: "trade, commerce, transportation, transmission, or
communication among the several States. . . ." Employment "in" such
activities is least affected by local interests. A step removed
from employment "in commerce" is employment "in" production which
is "for" commerce. Under this clause, we have sustained coverage
whether the product is to be consumed primarily by commerce in the
statutory sense, by its "facilities and instrumentalities,"
see
Alstate Construction Co. v. Durkin, 345 U. S.
13, or, as in the case of the products of the industrial
consumers of water here, to move in it. Further removed from
"commerce" is employment not "in" production "for" commerce, but in
an activity which is only "related" to such production. In applying
this provision, we have necessarily borne in mind that it is
furthest removed in the scheme of the statute from the hub of the
national interest in "commerce" upon which a limited displacement
of state power is predicated.
The amendment of § 3(j) in 1949 did not alter the basic
statutory scheme of coverage, but did reinforce the requirement
that, in applying the last clause of the section, its position at
the periphery of coverage be taken into account as a relevant
factor in the determination. In revising coverage, Congress turned
only to the last clause of the section, which it evidently
continued to regard as
Page 362 U. S. 317
marking the outer limits of applicability. The amendment
substantially adopts the gloss of
Kirschbaum to indicate
the scope of coverage of activities only "related" to production.
But examination of its history discloses that, in adopting that
gloss, the purpose of Congress was not simply to approve everything
done here and in the lower courts in what purported to be specific
applications of that inevitably elusive formulation. While the
approach of
Kirschbaum was confirmed, the change manifests
the view of Congress that, on occasion, courts, including this
Court, had found activities to be covered which the law-defining
body deemed too remote from commerce or too incidental to it.
The House, overriding the contrary action of its Labor
Committee, which had left § 3(j) unchanged,
see H.R. 5856,
as reported, and H.R.Rep. No. 267, 81st Cong., 1st Sess., 1949,
adopted an amendment proposed by Committee member Lucas from the
floor (95 Cong.Rec. 11000), which did amend § 3(j). Representative
Lucas made it plain that it was his purpose to constrict coverage.
95 Cong.Rev. 11001. As passed by the House, § 3(j) was identical
with the present Act except that for "directly essential" the House
version used "indispensable."
The Senate substituted its own bill, S. 653, for the House
draft, and its version left § 3(j) unchanged. The resulting
conference adopted the House bill insofar as it amended § 3(j),
with only the change already noted.
While the reports presented to the House and Senate by their
respective conferees manifest some disagreement as to degree,
[
Footnote 3] it is apparent
that some restraint on coverage was intended by both. In the House,
for example,
Kirschbaum was approved, and our decision in
Martino v. Michigan Window Cleaning Co., 327 U.
S. 173, was disapproved
Page 362 U. S. 318
(H.R.Conf.Rep. No. 1453, 81st Cong., 1st Sess., p. 15), while
the Senate conferees, with different emphasis, noted only that the
standard applied in "most" of our decisions was adopted. 95
Cong.Rec. 14874.
Both reports use as illustrations of coverage which remains
unchanged by the amendment employment in utilities supplying water
to the producers of goods for commerce. H.R.Conf.Rep. No. 1453, p.
14; 95 Cong.Rec. 14875. But no illustration in either statement
deals with construction of a dam designed solely for use as an
impounding facility for a local water distribution system. The
House Report does expressly state that the case of
E. C.
Schroeder Co. v. Clifton, 153 F.2d 385, is an instance of an
activity not within the amended Act. But the activity there
involved was one in support of construction of a dam; it was not
the construction of the dam itself. Thus, even were we to accept
the illustrations in the House Report as authoritative, we would
not be relieved of the duty of deciding where between these
boundaries of approval and disapproval the present facts lie. To do
so requires that we once again apply the formulation set down in
Kirschbaum, which, in light of the 1949 amendment, we must
do with renewed awareness of the purpose of Congress to avoid
intrusion into withdrawn local activities.
To establish coverage, the Secretary relies upon
Farmers
Reservoir & Irrigation Co. v. McComb, 337 U.
S. 755, which, he asserts, establishes that employees
are covered who are engaged not merely in operation of, but in
maintenance and repair of, the facilities of a company distributing
water for consumption by producers for commerce. [
Footnote 4] He urges that, once it is
recognized -- as the court
Page 362 U. S. 319
below failed to do -- that construction work is not excluded
from the Act's coverage, this concededly essential expansion of
facilities is not distinguishable from maintenance and repair in
any characteristic made relevant by the standard of "closely
related" and "directly essential" to production. We do not
agree.
Assuming
arguendo that maintenance and repair of the
completed dam would be covered employment, it does not follow that
construction of the dam therefore is. The activities are
undoubtedly equally "directly essential" to the producers of goods
who depend upon the water supply; but they are not equally remote
from production or from the "commerce" for which production is
intended. The distinction between maintenance and repair, on the
one hand, and replacement or new construction, on the other, may
often be difficult to delineate, but is a practical distinction to
which law must not be indifferent. Its relevance here, where our
purpose must be to isolate primarily local activities from the flow
of commerce to which they invariably relate, lies in the close
relation of maintenance and repair to operation, as opposed to
replacement or new construction which is a separate undertaking
necessarily prior to operation, and therefore more remote from the
end result of the process. As we held in
Vollmer, that an
activity is rightly called construction and is therefore distinct
from operation, does not
per se remove it from coverage.
Construction may be sufficiently "closely related" to production to
place it in that proximity to "commerce" which the Act demands as a
predicate to coverage. Here, however, neither a facility of
"commerce" nor a facility of "production" is under construction.
Operation of the completed dam will merely support production
facilities, and construction of the dam is yet another step more
remote.
The Secretary relies upon
Mitchell v. Lublin, McGaughy &
Associates, 358 U. S. 207, and
Mitchell v. C. W.
Page 362 U. S. 320
Vollmer & Co., supra, to establish that this
construction is closely enough related to "production of goods for
commerce" to be within the coverage of the Act. In each of those
cases, a construction activity was found "directly and vitally
related" to "commerce," and therefore "in commerce," and what we
have already said demonstrates that they are not useful guides
here. As
Lublin, supra, manifests, an activity
sufficiently "directly related" to commerce to be "in" it is, at
most, no further removed from "commerce" than is the employment "in
production" itself which the Act expressly covers.
Compare
Mitchell v. Lublin, McGaughy & Associates, supra, with Alstate
Construction Co. v. Durkin, 345 U. S. 13. For
this reason, although the Act has never contained even a general
definition of the relationship of an activity to commerce necessary
to justify its inclusion, such a relationship has been extrapolated
by the courts in conformity with the statutory scheme, so as to
displace state regulation "throughout the farthest reaches of the
channels of interstate commerce."
Walling v. Jacksonville Paper
Co., 317 U. S. 564,
317 U. S. 567.
No independent vitality attaches to conclusory phrases such as
"directly" or "vitally related." What is finally controlling in
each case is the relationship of the employment to "commerce," in
the sense of the statute, and it needs no argument that, as to that
relationship, this case is significantly different from
Lublin or
Vollmer.
Moreover, though construction and operation of this dam are
equally "directly essential" to the producers who require the water
impounded and distributed, neither the construction nor the
operation of the dam is designed for their use. Water is supplied
by the District to a miscellany of users throughout its
geographical area, and somewhat less than half of the consumption
is by producers. These facilities, and their construction, are thus
to be differentiated from the irrigation system in the
Page 362 U. S. 321
Farmers Reservoir case, which was dedicated exclusively
to supply water to farmers producing for commerce.
These are no doubt matters of the nicest degree. They are
inevitably so in the scheme and mode of enforcement of this
statute. Bearing in mind the cautionary revision in 1949, and that
the focal center of coverage is "commerce," the combination of the
remoteness of this construction from production, and the absence of
a dedication of the completed facilities either exclusively or
primarily to production, persuades us that the activity is not
"closely related" or "directly essential" to production for
commerce.
The Secretary alternatively urges that, because some of the
water supplied by the District is consumed by facilities and
instrumentalities of commerce, the water should be regarded as
"goods" produced "for commerce," and the construction of the dam
should be found sufficiently related to such production to be
within the Act's coverage. He relies on
Alstate Construction
Co. v. Durkin, supra, and compares the water here to the
construction materials there produced primarily for use in road
construction. It is a sufficient answer to this contention that the
record is devoid of evidence of a purposeful and substantial
dedication of otherwise local production to consumption by
"commerce" which was the basis of our decision in
Alstate.
Indeed, it appears that the water supplied to the facilities and
instrumentalities of commerce is but an insignificant portion of
the total.
Affirmed.
[
Footnote 1]
With exceptions not relevant here, § 7, the hours provision,
directs an employer to comply with its provisions as to "any of his
employees who is engaged in commerce or in the production of goods
for commerce. . . ."
[
Footnote 2]
Only the last clause of § 3(j) was amended in 1949. Before the
amendment, it was provided that
"an employee shall be deemed to have been engaged in the
production of goods if such employee was employed in producing,
manufacturing, mining, handling, transporting, or in any other
manner working on such goods,
or in any process or occupation
necessary to the production thereof, in any State."
52 Stat. 1061. (Emphasis added.) The amended last clause
provides: "
or in any closely related process or occupation
directly essential to the production thereof, in any State."
63 Stat. 911. (Emphasis added.)
[
Footnote 3]
The views of a minority of the Senate conferees emphasize the
apparent inconsistencies between the reports delivered to the House
and Senate. 95 Cong.Rec. 14880.
[
Footnote 4]
The Secretary similarly relies on the approval in general terms
of such coverage in the reports of the House and Senate conferees.
H.R.Conf.Rep. No. 1453, 81st Cong., 1st Sess., p. 14; 95 Cong.Rec.
14875.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, with whom The CHIEF JUSTICE, MR. JUSTICE
BLACK and MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN concur, dissenting.
The opinion of the Court is more consistent with the dissent in
Mitchell v. C. W. Vollmer & Co., 349 U.
S. 427, in which my Brother FRANKFURTER joined, than it
is with
Page 362 U. S. 322
the Court's opinion in that case. The liberal construction given
the Act from
Kirschbaum Co. v. Walling, 316 U.
S. 517, to
Alstate Construction Co. v. Durkin,
345 U. S. 13, and
down to and including the
Vollmer case is now forsaken.
Yet this seems to me to be a singularly inappropriate occasion to
change the direction of the law in a mere matter of statutory
construction.
The report of the Senate Conferees (95 Cong.Rec. 14874-14875)
which ushered § 3(j) into the law in its present form [
Footnote 2/1] said:
"The work of employees of employers who produce or supply goods
or facilities for customers engaged within the same State in the
production of other goods for interstate commerce may also be
covered as closely related and directly essential to such
production. This would be true, for example, of employees engaged
in the following activities:"
"
* * * *"
"2. Producing and supplying fuel, power, water, or other goods
for customers using such goods in the production of different goods
for interstate commerce.
Reynolds v. Salt River Valley Water
Users Asso. [143 F.2d 863 (C.A. 9)];
Phillips v. Meeker
Coop. Light and Power Asso. [158 F.2d 698 (C.A. 8)];
Lewis
v. Florida Light and Power Co., [154 F.2d 751 (C.A. 5)];
West Kentucky Coal Co. v. Walling [153 F.2d 152 (C.A. 6)].
"
Page 362 U. S. 323
The dam here under construction was to furnish the City of
Corpus Christi with a water supply -- a city water system that
services railroads, truck companies, airlines, other
instrumentalities of interstate commerce, and various producers of
goods for commerce. It is conceded that the major industries in
this area produce goods for commerce and use a substantial amount
of water in that connection. Indeed, 40% to 50% of all water
furnished by the city is used industrially.
Reynolds v. Salt River Valley Water Users Ass'n, 143
F.2d 863 (C.A. 9th Cir.), held that repair and maintenance
employees of canals and dams of an irrigation company supplying
water for growers of crops intended for shipment in interstate
commerce were engaged in an occupation necessary for the production
of goods for commerce.
West Kentucky Coal Co. v. Walling, 153 F.2d 582 (C.A.
6th Cir.), held that men producing coal sold to factories producing
goods for commerce were covered by the Act.
Meeker Cooperative Light & Power Ass'n v. Phillips,
158 F.2d 698 (C.A. 8th Cir.), held that employees of a power
cooperative distributing electricity to companies that produced
goods for commerce were covered by the Act.
These three decisions, as noted, were approved by the Senate
report defining the scope of § 3(j). Certainly then, employees
maintaining this new dam would be covered by the Act, as our own
decision in
Farmers Reservoir & Irrigation Co. v.
McComb, 337 U. S. 755,
indicates.
How then, if these precedents are to be followed, can employees
who built the dam be out of reach of the Act?
We held in
Mitchell v. C. W. Vollmer & Co., supra,
that construction of a lock to be used in commerce was work
Page 362 U. S. 324
"in commerce."
"The test is whether the work is so directly and vitally related
to the functioning of an instrumentality or facility of interstate
commerce as to be, in practical effect, a part of it, rather than
isolated, local activity."
349 U.S. at
349 U. S. 429.
There is no more remoteness here than there. It is difficult to
understand why a stringent test of remoteness is used in
determining whether construction work is related to "production of
goods for commerce" when a liberal test was applied in the
Vollmer case in holding that such work was "in commerce."
See Armour & Co. v. Wantock, 323 U.
S. 126,
323 U. S.
131.
Prior to the 1949 amendments, the standard in § 3(j) was whether
the work was in any "process or occupation necessary" for the
production of goods for commerce. The present standard, so far as
material here, is whether the work is "in any closely related
process or occupation directly essential to the production" of
goods for commerce. [
Footnote 2/2]
The Senate report said that employees "repairing, maintaining,
improving or enlarging . . . facilities of producers of goods" were
covered. 95 Cong.Rec. 14875. This group, the report stated, were
included because they were "performing tasks necessary to effective
productive operations of the producer." 95 Cong.Rec. 14874.
Most of the decisions cited in the report which are descriptive
of this category of employees were cases where the employees were
working on existing structures or appliances used by producers of
goods for commerce, [
Footnote 2/3]
whether or not those facilities were owned by the producers. Such
is the case of
Borden Co. v. Borella, 325 U.
S. 679. But one of the cases cited by the report as
Page 362 U. S. 325
also descriptive of this group of employees was
Walling v.
McCrady Construction Co., 156 F.2d 932 (C.A. 3d Cir.), which
brought within the Act's coverage workers building roads and
bridges to be used to transport goods in process of production for
interstate commerce. These facilities, like the one in the present
case, were not owned by the producers, nor were some of them yet in
existence. But, when completed, they would serve as facilities for
those who were producing goods for commerce. That case clearly
suggests that the Congress, in redefining the scope of § 3(j), was
following the broad contours of the coverage which had been
delineated by the construction cases, as well as by the maintenance
cases.
It seems as if there could be no doubt that the present case is
brought squarely within that category, for this project was not the
construction of a wholly new water system, but an improvement of an
existing water system. Moreover, the water system being improved
would seem to be as much a facility of those producing goods for
commerce as was the highway in the
McCrady case. Moreover,
in
Alstate Construction Co. v. Durkin, supra, a company,
making products sold intrastate but used to improve the facilities
of those producing goods for commerce was held to be employing
workers covered by the Act. The work in improving the present
facility used by producers of goods for commerce is at least as
close to the process of production as the labor of the men in the
Alstate case.
So it is that I believe today's decision changes the symmetry of
the judicial rulings under the Act, narrows its scope, and impairs
its effectiveness. Today's ruling is a departure from the accepted
construction. By this retreat, I fear we invite hostile
constructions that will undermine the broad base which Congress
gave the Act. If there is to be a change in the direction of the
law or an
Page 362 U. S. 326
alteration in its emphasis, it should be done by Congress, which
is far better suited than we to mark the farthest areas which the
liberal policies of the Act were designed to cover. I regret that
today we give up territory that Congress has fairly claimed, that
we take a backward step from the measures Congress designed to
protect the lowest paid and weakest group of wage earners in the
Nation.
[
Footnote 2/1]
Section 3(j) provides:
"'Produced' means produced, manufactured, mined, handled, or in
any other manner worked on in any State; and for the purposes of
this Act an employee shall be deemed to have been engaged in the
production of goods if such employee was employed in producing,
manufacturing, mining, handling, transporting, or in any other
manner working on such goods, or in any closely related process or
occupation directly essential to the production thereof, in any
State."
[
Footnote 2/2]
See 362
U.S. 310fn2/1|>note 1,
supra.
[
Footnote 2/3]
And see Roland Electrical Co. v. Walling, 326 U.
S. 657, also cited with approval in the report. 95
Cong.Rec. 14875.