Bell v. Se. Pa. Transp. Auth.

• Decision Date: 11 July 2013
• Docket Number: No. 12–4031.,12–4031.
• Citation: Bell v. Se. Pa. Transp. Auth., 733 F.3d 490 (3rd Cir. 2013)
• Parties: David BELL, et al., Appellants v. SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

733 F.3d 490

David BELL, et al., Appellants

v.SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY.

No. 12–4031.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

Submitted Under Third Circuit

LAR 34.1(a) July 11, 2013.

Opinion Filed: Aug. 19, 2013.

Bruce Bodner, Esq., Howard J. Kaufman, Esq., Kaufman, Coren & Ress, Philadelphia, PA, for Appellants.

Jo Bennett, Esq., Michael G. Tierce, Esq., Stevens & Lee, Zachary R. Davis, Esq., Hangley, Aronchick, Segal, Pudlin & Schiller, One Logan Square, Philadelphia, PA, for Appellants.

Before: GREENAWAY, JR., SLOVITER and BARRY, Circuit Judges.

OPINION OF THE COURT

BARRY, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiffs, on behalf of themselves and former and current bus drivers and trolley operators (the “Operators”) employed by defendant, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (“SEPTA”), brought this class action under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), 29 U.S.C. §§ 201 et seq., to recover unpaid wages and overtime compensation for work performed during morning “pre-trip” inspections required before the start of each Operator's daily run. Relying on our decision in Vadino v. A. Valey Engineers, 903 F.2d 253 (3d Cir.1990), the District Court granted SEPTA's motion to dismiss on the ground that the FLSA claim required the interpretation of provisions of three collective bargaining agreements (the “CBAs”) between SEPTA and the unions representing the Operators and was therefore subject to those agreements' grievance and arbitration provisions. Because we conclude that the Operators' FLSA claim does not require the interpretation of the collective bargaining agreements, we will vacate the order of the District Court.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Pre–Run Obligations

This dispute involves two sets of responsibilities each Operator must fulfill at the start of the workday prior to leaving the bus or trolley depots. First, SEPTA's Bus Operations Rules and Regulations Manual has long required Operators to perform a series of clerical tasks each morning (the “Reporting Tasks”). These tasks include checking in with the dispatcher, collecting and punching passenger transfers, filling out forms and waybills, reading SEPTA “Bulletin Orders,” checking daily detours and operating conditions, copying their run schedules, and determining and walking to the location of their vehicles. Compl. at ¶ 18. The Reporting Tasks take approximately ten minutes to complete. Accordingly, SEPTA's Operating Manual requires that Operators “report for duty at the required time and at the required location, in accordance with schedules set up in the employees' particular departments and locations ... not less than ten minutes” before the time the bus is scheduled to leave the depot. Id. at ¶ 16. The Operators allege that, even though they are compensated for performing the Reporting Tasks, this time is not included in the calculation of overtime.

Since daily pre-trip vehicle safety inspections became a federal and state requirement in 1992, SEPTA has also required that Operators perform daily pre-trip inspections (the “CDL Inspections”), which require them to inspect several items on each vehicle, including the braking system, lights, horns, doors, turn signals, wheelchair lifts, and PA system. Id. at ¶¶ 19, 20. The CDL Inspections take approximately fifteen minutes to complete. The Operators contend that SEPTA fails to compensate them for these inspections, and that they must perform them “off the clock.” According to the FLSA, Operators must be paid 1.5 times their regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 hours in a given week. Because many Operators work 40 hours a week exclusive of the time spent performing CDL inspections, the Operators contend that SEPTA's failure to compensate them for this time results in unpaid overtime wages, constituting a willful violation of the FLSA.

B. The Collective Bargaining Agreements

The Operators and SEPTA are bound by the terms of three separate collective bargaining agreements between (1) SEPTA and the City Transit Division Operators (“CTDO”); (2) SEPTA and the Transport Workers Union Local 234 (“TWU”); and (3) SEPTA and the United Transportation Union Local 1594 (“UTU”). Each of the CBAs includes a provision concerning compensation for time spent working prior to the morning scheduled start time. The CBA between the CTDO and SEPTA provides:

Where an employee is required to report in advance of the scheduled starting time of one's run or to turn in passenger receipts or to so report and turn in, and does so, one-quarter hour will be added to the scheduled run time and the employee will be paid for the one-quarter hour at the aforesaid rate. This one-quarter hour will be treated as time worked for all purposes except in calculating overtime under Section 404(c).

The CBA between the TWU and SEPTA provides:

The authority will pay operators required to report ten (10) minutes in advance of pull-out and who are required to turn in receipts at the completion of said work one quarter (1/4) of an hour per day for report and turn-in allowance. Such allowance will not be included for the computation of overtime.

The CBA between the UTU and SEPTA provides:

An additional allowance of two-tenths (.2) of an hour per day will be allowed all regular Operators for reporting time for preparation of their assignments.... It is understood that these additional time allowances should not be considered in the computing of overtime.

Each of the CBAs also includes broad grievance provisions, which, in sum and substance, require that parties submit to arbitration any dispute involving the application, implementation, or interpretation of any of the provisions of the agreements.

Relying on our decision in Vadino, SEPTA moved to dismiss the complaint on the ground that the Operators' FLSA claim is dependent on the disputed interpretation of the above CBA provisions regarding reporting time, which, according to the CBAs' respective grievance provisions, require that the parties first submit the disputed issue to arbitration. On September 28, 2012, the District Court granted the motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The Operators now appeal.

II. ANALYSIS

The FLSA requires that employers compensate employees working longer than forty hours a week for time worked in excess of forty hours “at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate at which he is employed.” 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1). The Operators contend that time spent—approximately twenty-five minutes—conducting the Reporting Tasks and the CDL Inspections prior to the start of morning runs is compensable “time worked” for purposes of the FLSA. The Complaint alleges that SEPTA violated section 207(a) of the FLSA by failing to properly compensate the Operators for this time and for failing to include this time in the computation of overtime.¹

The District Court concluded, however, that the resolution of the FLSA claim depends upon the interpretation of provisions of the collective bargaining agreements, which, in accordance with the grievance and arbitration provisions of the CBAs, and the “strong federal policy in favor of arbitration,” must be decided in the first instance by an arbitrator. We disagree.

In Barrentine v. Arkansas–Best Freight System, Inc., 450 U.S. 728, 101 S.Ct. 1437, 67 L.Ed.2d 641 (1981), the Supreme Court addressed the distinction between claims arising out of breaches of collective bargaining agreements (in that case, under the Labor Management Relations Act (“LMRA”), 29 U.S.C. § 185), and those brought under the FLSA. The Court acknowledged that the LMRA governs relationships between employers and unions by “encourag [ing] the negotiation of terms and conditions of employment through the collective-bargaining process,” while the FLSA reflects a different genre of statute, one which “guarantees covered employees specific substantive rights.” Barrentine, 450 U.S. at 734, 101 S.Ct. 1437. The minimum protections the FLSA provides to individual workers, including 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1), “take precedenceover conflicting provisions in a collectively bargained compensation arrangement.” Id. at 740–41, 101 S.Ct. 1437. An employee's right to relief under the FLSA, therefore, is distinct from an employee's contractual rights as provided in a collective bargaining agreement. Id. at 745, 101 S.Ct. 1437 (“[T]he FLSA rights petitioners seek to assert in this action are independent of the collective-bargaining process. They devolve on petitioners as individual workers, not as members of a collective organization.”). The Court noted that, when vindicating rights under the FLSA, the statute's “enforcement scheme grants individual employees broad access to the courts.... No exhaustion requirement or other procedural barriers are set up, and no other forum for enforcement of statutory rights is referred to or created by the statute.” Id. at 740, 101 S.Ct. 1437.

In some instances, however, an employee's FLSA claim is inevitably intertwined with the interpretation or application of a collective bargaining agreement. We encountered this in Vadino. In Vadino, an employee asserted two claims against his former employer: (1) a claim under section 301 of the LMRA, alleging that his employer breached the applicable CBA by paying him less than the “journeyman” wages to which he contended he was entitled; and (2) a claim under the FLSA, contending that his employer paid him less than one and one-half times his “regular rate” for hours worked in excess of forty hours per week, because his overtime rate should have been one and one-half times the “journeyman” rate. 903 F.2d at 257. Vadino, however, admitted that his employer paid him one and one-half times his “normal” hourly rate for overtime hours. Id. at 264. His FLSA claim, then, was tethered to the threshold question of whether or not he was entitled to journeyman wages or normal wages under the governing CBA. In this sense, Vadino's FLSA claim was entirely...