Armour Co v. Wantock

• Decision Date: 04 December 1944
• Docket Number: No. 73,73
• Parties: ARMOUR & CO. v. WANTOCK et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

323 U.S. 126

65 S.Ct. 165

89 L.Ed. 118

ARMOUR & CO.

v WANTOCK et al.

No. 73.

Argued Oct. 13, 1944.

Decided Dec. 4, 1944.

Rehearing Denied Jan. 2, 1945.

See 323 U.S. 818, 65 S.Ct. 427.

Mr. Paul E. Blanchard, of Chicago, Ill., for petitioner.

Mr. Ben Meyers, of Chicago, Ill., for respondents.

Mr. Justice JACKSON delivered the opinion of the Court.

Armour and Company, petitioners, have been held liable to certain employees for overtime, liquidated damages and attorneys' fees under the Fair Labor Standards Act. 7 Cir., 140 F.2d 356. The overtime in question is that spent on the employer's premises as fire guards subject to call, but otherwise put to such personal use as sleeping or recreation. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on facts of considerable similarity reached an opposite result, in Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 136 F.2d 112; Id., 323 U.S. 134, 65 S.Ct. 161. To resolve the conflict we granted certiorari in both cases. Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 322 U.S. 723, 64 S.Ct. 1256; Armour & Co. v. Wantock, 322 U.S. 723, 64 S.Ct. 1265.

Armour and Company operates a soap factory in Chicago which produces goods for interstate commerce. It maintains a private fire-fighting force to supplement that provided by the city. The respondents were employed as fire fighters only, and otherwise had nothing to do with the production of goods. They were not night watchmen, a separate force being maintained for that purpose. They were not given access to the factory premises at night except by call or permission of the watchmen.

These men worked in shifts which began at 8:00 a.m., when they punched a time clock. The following nine hours, with a half hour off for lunch, they worked at inspecting, cleaning, and keeping in order the company's fire-fighting apparatus, which included fire engines, hose, pumps, water barrels and buckets, extinguishers, and a sprinkler system. At 5:00 p.m. they 'punched out' on the time clock. Then they remained on call in the fire hall, provided by the Company and located on its property, until the following morning at 8:00. They went off duty entirely for the next twenty-four hours and then resumed work as described.

During this night time on duty they were required to stay in the fire hall, to respond to any alarms, to make any temporary repairs of fire apparatus, and take care of the sprinkler system if defective or set off by mischance. The time spent in these tasks was recorded and amounts on average to less than a half hour a week. The employer does not deny that time actually so spent should be compensated in accordance with the Act.

The litigation concerns the time during which these men were required to be on the employer's premises, to some extent amenable to the employer's discipline, subject to call, but not engaged in any specific work. The Company provided cooking equipment, beds, radios, and facilities for cards and amusements with which the men slept, ate, or entertained themselves pretty much as they chose. They were not, however, at liberty to leave the premises except that, by permission of the watchman, they might go to a nearby restaurant for their evening meal.

A single fixed weekly wage was paid to the men, regardless of the variation in hours per week spent on regular or on fire house duty, the schedule of shifts occasioning considerable variation in weekly time.

This fire-fighting service was not maintained at the instance of the Company's officials in charge of production, but at that of its insurance department. Several other plants of Armour and those of numerous other manufacturers in the same industry produce similar goods for commerce without maintaining such a fire-fighting service.

On these facts the petitioner contends: first, that employees in such auxiliary fire-fighting capacity are not engaged in commerce or in production of goods for commerce, or in any occupation necessary to such production within the meaning of the Act; and, second, that even if they were within the Act, time spent in sleeping, eating, playing cards, listening to the radio, or otherwise amusing themselves, cannot be counted as working time. The employees contended in the District Court that all of such standby time, however spent, was employment time within the Act, but they took no appeal from the judgment insofar as it was adverse to them.

The District Court held that the employees in such service were covered by the Act. But it declined to go to either extreme demanded by the parties as to working time. Usual hours for sleep and for eating it ruled would not be counted, but the remaining hours should. Judgment was rendered for Wantock of $505.67 overtime, the same amount in liquidated damages, and $600 for attorneys' fees; while Smith recovered $943.07 overtime, liquidated, damages of equal amount, and attorneys' fees of $650. The Court of Appeals affirmed.

First. Were the employees in question covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act? Section 7 of the Act, 29 U.S.C. § 207, 29 U.S.C.A. § 207, by its own terms applies maximum hours provisions to two general classes of employees, those who are engaged in commerce and those who are engaged in producing goods for commerce. Section 3(j), 29 U.S.C. § 203(j), 29 U.S.C.A. § 203(j), adds another by the provision that 'an employee shall be deemed to have been engaged in the production of goods if such employee was employed * * * in any process or occupation necessary to the production' of goods for commerce. The courts below held that the respondents were included in this class. The petitioner seeks to limit those entitled to this classification by reading the word 'necessary' in the highly restrictive sense of 'indispensable,' 'essential,' and 'vital'—words it finds in previous pronouncements of this Court dealing with this clause. Kirschbaum v. Walling, 316 U.S. 517, 524, 526, 62 S.Ct. 1116, 1120, 1121, 86 L.Ed. 1638; Overstreet v. North Shore Corp., 318 U.S. 125, 129, 130, 63 S.Ct. 494, 497, 498, 87 L.Ed. 656. These and other cases, says petitioner, indicate that in applying the Act a distinction must be made between those processes or occupations which an employer finds advantageous in his own plan of production and those without which he could not practically produce at all. Present respondents, it contends, clearly fall within the former category because soap can be and in many other plants is produced without the kind of fire protection which these employees provide.

The argument would give an unwarranted rigidity to the application of the word 'necessary,' which has always been recognized as a word to be harmonized with its context. See McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 413, 414, 4 L.Ed. 579. No hard and fast rule will tell us what can be dispensed with in 'the production of goods.' All depends upon the detail with which that bare phrase is clothed. In the law of infants' liability, what are 'necessaries' may well vary with the environment to which the infant is exposed: climate and station in life and many other factors. So, too, no hard and fast rule may be transposed from one industry to another to say what is necessary in 'the production of goods.' What is practically necessary to it will depend on its environment and position. A plant may be so built as to be an exceptional fire hazard, or it may be menaced by neighborhood. It may be farther from public fire protection, or its use of inflammable materials may make instaneous response to fire alarm of peculiar importance to it. 'Whatever terminology is used, the criterion is necessarily one of degree and must be so defined.' Santa Cruz Fruit Packing Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, 303 U.S. 453, 467, 58 S.Ct. 656, 660, 82 L.Ed. 953; Kirschbaum v. Walling, 316 U.S. 517, 526, 62 S.Ct. 1116, 1121, 86 L.Ed. 1638. In their context, the restrictive words like 'indispensable,' which petitioner quotes, do not have the automatic significance petitioner seeks to give them. What is required is a practical judgment as to whether the particular employer actually operates the work as part of an integrated effort for the production of goods.

The fact that respondents were hired by an employer which shows no ostensible purpose for being in business except to...