Atkinson v. House Of Raeford Farms Inc. D/b/a D.C. Farms
| Decision Date | 20 April 2011 |
| Docket Number | C.A. No. 6:09-cv-01901-JMC |
| Parties | Natasha Atkinson, Shirley Baisey,Calvin Barton, Jorge Castellanos,Quashonda Chapman, Shamika Cureton, Anna Edens, Billy Harris, LaToya Jamison, Lisa Jamison, Stacey Johnson, Terrance Johnson, Antonio Miller, Constance Neal, Kelly Pardue, Sherry Peralta, Pamela Vaughn, Pauline Warren, Plaintiffs, v. House of Raeford Farms, Inc. d/b/a Columbia Farms, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of South Carolina |
Plaintiffs brought a collective action against Defendant House of Raeford, Inc. d/b/a Columbia Farms ("Columbia Farms") alleging that Columbia Farms failed to compensate them as required by federal and state law. Certain individual Plaintiffs also alleged that Columbia Farms committed retaliatory acts against them in response to those Plaintiffs' assertion of workers' compensation claims. Additionally, one Plaintiff asserted a cause of action for invasion of privacy arising from the alleged disclosure of medical information. Columbia Farms filed a Motion for Summary Judgment [Doc. 55] as to each of the causes of action asserted in Plaintiffs' Amended Complaint. On March 31, 2011, the court issued a text order containing a preliminary ruling granting in part and denying in part Columbia Farms's motion and providing that the court wouldissue a formal order on the motion at a later date. This is the court's formal order on Columbia Farms's motion. For the reasons stated below, the court grants in part and denies in part Columbia Farms's Motion for Summary Judgment [Doc. 55].
Columbia Farms operates a chicken processing plant located in Greenville, South Carolina. Plaintiffs are a group of current and former employees of Columbia Farms's Greenville plant who worked on a production line, cutting and de-boning chickens. Each Plaintiff alleges that he or she was required to work more than nine (9) hours each work day, but was only paid for eight (8) hours because they were routinely not paid for lunch breaks that were only several minutes long and not paid while donning and doffing required protective gear. Specifically, Plaintiffs allege that (a) Columbia Farms's management failed to keep accurate records of Plaintiffs' work time, (b) required Plaintiffs to spend in excess of fifteen (15) minutes each day donning and doffing protective gear and preparing for work before clocking in, (c) deducted from Plaintiffs' wages thirty (30) minute meal breaks when such breaks were actually less than twenty (20) minutes, (d) regularly failed to pay Plaintiffs for non-meal breaks that were less than twenty (20) minutes in length, and (e) failed to pay Plaintiffs overtime when Plaintiffs worked more than forty (40) hours per week. Based on these allegations, Plaintiffs brought a collective claim under the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA"), 29 U.S.C. 201, et seq., for Columbia Farms's failure to pay required compensation under the law. Plaintiffs also pursued a claim under the South Carolina Payment of Wages Act, S.C. Code Ann. §§ 41-10-30 and 40, for Columbia Farms's alleged failure to properly notify Plaintiffs in writing of their hours of work, failure to provide them itemized payroll statements, and failure to pay them their wages on the day of their termination.
Additionally, multiple Plaintiffs allege that they were wrongfully discharged from employment with Columbia Farms in retaliation for instituting workers' compensation claims. While all Plaintiffs had not filed formal workers' compensation claims, each Plaintiff claims that he or she suffered a work related injury of which Columbia Farms had knowledge and that shortly after the occurrence of the work related injuries, each Plaintiff was subject to wrongful termination for a pretextual reason. Plaintiffs allege that Columbia Farms's discharge of Plaintiffs was in violation of S.C. Code Ann. § 41-1-80.
Finally, Plaintiff Lisa Jamison claims that Columbia Farms violated her right to privacy in disclosing her private health information. Particularly, she asserts that the plant nurse disclosed details regarding Plaintiff Jamison's medical information with her co-workers.
Summary judgment is appropriate when the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with affidavits, if any, show that "there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). To prevail on a motion for summary judgment, the movant must demonstrate that: (1) there is no genuine issue as to any material fact; and (2) that he is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. In determining whether a genuine issue has been raised, the court must construe all inferences and ambiguities against the movant and in favor of the non-moving party. United States v. Diebold, Inc., 369 U.S. 654, 655 (1962).
The party seeking summary judgment shoulders the initial burden of demonstrating to the district court that there is no genuine issue of material fact. Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323 (1986). Once the movant has made this threshold demonstration, the non-moving party, tosurvive the motion for summary judgment, may not rest on the allegations averred in his pleadings. Rather, the non-moving party must demonstrate that specific, material facts exist which give rise to a genuine issue. Id. at 324. Under this standard, the existence of a mere scintilla of evidence in support of the plaintiff's position is insufficient to withstand the summary judgment motion. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 252 (1986). Likewise, conclusory allegations or denials, without more, are insufficient to preclude the granting of the summary judgment motion. Ross v. Commc'ns Satellite Corp., 759 F.2d 355, 365 (4th Cir. 1985). Anderson, 477 U.S. at 248.
Columbia Farms argues that it is entitled to summary judgment on Plaintiffs' claims under the FLSA seeking compensation for time spent donning and doffing required and optional protective clothing and equipment because the claims are barred by 29 U.S.C. § 203(o) and the Portal-to-Portal Act, 29 U.S.C. § 254(a).1
Under the FLSA, 29 U.S.C. § 201 et seq., employers are required to pay minimum wages and overtime. Notwithstanding an employer's obligation to pay minimum and overtime wages, the FLSA allows employers to exclude an employee's "time spent in changing clothes or washing" from the compensable work time. Section 203(o) of the FLSA provides:
In determining for the purposes of [the minimum wage and overtime provisions] of this title the hours for which an employee is employed, there shall be excluded any time spent in changing clothes or washing at the beginning or end of each workday which was excluded from measured working time during the week involved by the express terms of or by custom or practice under a bona fide collective-bargaining agreement applicable to the particular employee.
29 U.S.C. § 203(o). Therefore, an employer may exclude from compensation time for the donning and doffing of protective gear at the beginning and end of each work shift under section 203(o) if two conditions are met: (1) the activities must constitute "changing clothes" within the meaning of the statute; and (2) the time spent on these activities must be excluded from the workday by the express terms of or the customs and practices under a bona fide collective bargaining agreement. See Sepulveda, et al. v. Allen Family Foods, Inc., 591 F.3d 209, 214 (4th Cir. 2009).
Section 254 of the Portal-to-Portal Act amended the FLSA to provide, among other things, that employers are additionally exempted from paying their employees for "activities which are preliminary to or postliminary to" the principal activities for which they are employed, unless the employer agrees to do so. See 29 U.S.C. § 254(a)(2) and (b). Generally, activities like changing clothes and washing, which are performed before or after the regular work shift, are considered preliminary or postliminary activities and are therefore "excluded from compensable work time." Steiner v. Mitchell, 350 U.S. 247, 249 (1956). However, changing clothes and washing are not excluded from compensable work time if they are "an integral and indispensible part" of an employee's principal activities. Id. at 256.
Both section 203(o) of the FLSA and the Portal-to-Portal Act bear on whether changing clothes and washing may be considered part of the compensable workday. While the provisions are interrelated, each may operate exclusively of the other. Therefore, an employer need not demonstratecompliance with both provisions to demonstrate that it has properly excluded compensation for activities which are categorized as changing clothes and washing.
In this case, Plaintiffs allege that Columbia Farms required Plaintiffs to purchase and wear items such as safety gloves, safety glasses, ear plugs, arm guards, steel toe boots, aprons, and latex gloves. According to Plaintiffs, they must walk to the break room, put their clothes in lockers, don cloth gloves, aprons, hair nets, rubber gloves and rubber sleeves, then walk upstairs to the production room before they can clock in at the beginning of each shift. After the bell rings to start each of the two unpaid thirty (30) minute breaks, Plaintiffs must remain at the conveyor belt until the last chicken passes them, perform "rework" (cutting pieces of chicken that they may have missed the first time the approximately ninety (90) birds per minute went by them on the conveyor belt), stand in line to wash their hands, wash their hands, remove their protective clothing and hang it up and...
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