Helmert v. Butterball, LLC

• Decision Date: 27 July 2011
• Docket Number: 4:10CV01025 JLH.,Nos. 4:08CV00342 JLH,s. 4:08CV00342 JLH
• Parties: Sheila HELMERT, Wilma Brown, and Lori West, on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated, Plaintiffs v. BUTTERBALL, LLC, Defendant.Roxie Garner, Roy Garner, Jason Foster, Miguel Anguiano Araujo, Christopher Smith, John Snarr, and James Rollins, on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated, Plaintiffs v. Butterball, LLC, and Gary R. Lenaghan, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Arkansas

17 Wage & Hour Cas.2d (BNA) 1733

805 F.Supp.2d 655

Sheila HELMERT, Wilma Brown, and Lori West, on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated, Plaintiffs

v.BUTTERBALL, LLC, Defendant.Roxie Garner, Roy Garner, Jason Foster, Miguel Anguiano Araujo, Christopher Smith, John Snarr, and James Rollins, on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated, Plaintiffs

v.Butterball, LLC, and Gary R. Lenaghan, Defendants.

Nos. 4:08CV00342 JLH

4:10CV01025 JLH.

United States District Court,E.D. Arkansas,Western Division.

July 27, 2011.

Anne T. Regan, J. Gordon Rudd, Jr., Zimmerman Reed PLLP, Minneapolis, MN, Kelly A. Swanson, Shawn M. Raiter, Thomas Joseph Snodgrass, Troy F. Tatting, Angela Beranek Brandt, Larson King, LLP, St. Paul, MN, Robert Thompson Veon, Veon Law Firm, P.A., Texarkana, AR, for Plaintiffs.

Eric R. Magnus, L. Dale Owens, Stephen X. Munger, C. Todd Van Dyke, Erin L. Payne, Jackson Lewis LLP, Atlanta, GA, Paul D. Waddell, Barrett & Deacon, P.A., Jonesboro, AR, for Defendants.

OPINION AND ORDER

J. LEON HOLMES, District Judge.

The parties have filed cross motions for partial summary judgment in the related cases of Helmert v. Butterball, No. 4:08CV00342 JLH, and Garner v. Butterball, No. 4:10CV01025 JLH. For the following reasons, the plaintiffs' motion for partial summary judgment is granted in part, and the defendants' motion for partial summary judgment is denied.

I.

A court should enter summary judgment if the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, demonstrates that there is no genuine issue of material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c); see also Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 250, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 2511, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986); Cheshewalla v. Rand & Son Constr. Co., 415 F.3d 847, 850 (8th Cir.2005). The party moving for summary judgment bears the initial responsibility of demonstrating the absence of a genuine issue of material fact. Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 2553, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986). If the moving party carries its burden, the nonmoving party must “come forward with ‘specific facts showing that there is a genuine issue for trial.’ ” Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio, 475 U.S. 574, 587, 106 S.Ct. 1348, 1356, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986) (quoting Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(e)) (emphasis in original). A genuine issue for trial exists only if there is sufficient evidence to allow a jury to return a verdict for the nonmoving party. Anderson, 477 U.S. at 249, 106 S.Ct. at 2511. The existence of merely a scintilla of evidence in support of a party's position is insufficient to defeat a motion for summary judgment; there must be evidence from which a jury could reasonably find for that party. Id. at 252, 106 S.Ct. at 2512.

II.

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, an employer must pay its employees a minimum wage for forty hours of work each week. 29 U.S.C. § 206(a) (2006). For any hours worked in excess of forty hours per week, the employer must pay its employees “at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate at which he is employed.” Id. § 207(a)(1). The FLSA does not define “work” or “workweek,” and as a result, courts have been left to decide whether particular activities engaged in by employees constitute “work” and, if so, whether an employer has violated the FLSA by failing to compensate its employees for those activities. To define the term “work” as it is used in the Act,

[t]he United States Supreme Court originally stated that employees subject to the [FLSA] must be paid for all time spent in “physical or mental exertion (whether burdensome or not) controlled or required by the employer and pursued necessarily and primarily for the benefit of the employer and his business.” ( Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Co. v. Muscoda Local No. 123, 321 U.S. 590 [, 64 S.Ct. 698, 88 L.Ed. 949] (1944)) Subsequently, the Court ruled that there need be no exertion at all and that all hours are hours worked which the employee is required to give his employer.... ( Armour & Co. v. Wantock, 323 U.S. 126[, 65 S.Ct. 165, 89 L.Ed. 118] (1944); Skidmore v. Swift, 323 U.S. 134[, 65 S.Ct. 161, 89 L.Ed. 124] (1944)).

29 C.F.R. § 785.7 (2011). In Anderson v. Mount Clemens Pottery Co., the Court defined the statutory workweek as “all time during which an employee is necessarily required to be on the employer's premises, on duty or at a prescribed workplace,” and held that employers are required to compensate employees for that time. 328 U.S. 680, 690–91, 66 S.Ct. 1187, 1194, 90 L.Ed. 1515 (1946) (holding that the time necessarily spent by employees walking from timeclocks near the factory entrance gate to their workstations was part of the statutory workweek and, thus, compensable).

In the year following Mount Clemens, Congress passed the Portal–to–Portal Act, amending certain provisions of the FLSA and narrowing the coverage of the FLSA “by excepting two activities that had been treated as compensable under [prior caselaw]: walking on the employer's premises to and from the actual place of performance of the principal activity of the employee, and activities that are ‘preliminary or postliminary’ to that principal activity.” IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U.S. 21, 27, 126 S.Ct. 514, 520, 163 L.Ed.2d 288 (2005); see 29 U.S.C. § 254(a). “Other than its express exceptions for travel to and from the location of the employee's ‘principal activity,’ and for activities that are preliminary or postliminary to that principal activity, the Portal–to–Portal Act [did] not ... change [the] Court's earlier descriptions of the terms ‘work’ and ‘workweek,’ or ... define the term ‘workday.’ ” Alvarez, 546 U.S. at 28, 126 S.Ct. at 520; see also 29 C.F.R. § 785.7 (“The Portal–to–Portal Act did not change the rule except to provide an exception for preliminary and postliminary activities.”).

Accordingly, to the extent that activities engaged in by an employee occur after the employee commences to perform the first principal activity on a particular workday and before he ceases the performance of the last principal activity on a particular workday, the provisions of [the Portal–to–Portal Act] have no application.

29 C.F.R. § 790.6(a).

Under the FLSA, the “workday” is “the period between the commencement and completion on the same workday of an employee's principal activity or activities.” Id. § 790.6(b). “It includes all time within that period whether or not the employee engages in work throughout all of that period.” Id. The FLSA regulations define “principal activities” as those which the employee is “employed to perform” or those integral and indispensable to a principal activity. Id. § 790.8.

If an employee in a chemical plant, for example, cannot perform his principal activities without putting on certain clothes, changing clothes on the employer's premises at the beginning and end of the workday would be an integral part of the employee's principal activity. On the other hand, if changing clothes is merely a convenience to the employee and not directly related to his principal activities, it would be considered as a “preliminary” or “postliminary” activity rather than a principal part of the activity.

Id. § 785.24(c); see also Steiner v. Mitchell, 350 U.S. 247, 252–56, 76 S.Ct. 330, 333–35, 100 L.Ed. 267 (1956) (changing clothes and taking showers in a battery plant, where the manufacturing process involved the extensive use of toxic materials, was an integral part of the employees' jobs); Mitchell v. King Packing Co., 350 U.S. 260, 263, 76 S.Ct. 337, 339, 100 L.Ed. 282 (1956) (knife-sharpening activities of workmen in a meatpacking plant before and after their scheduled shift time were integral and indispensable to their work). In other words, “any activity that is ‘integral and indispensable’ to a ‘principal activity’ is itself a ‘principal activity.’ ” Alvarez, 546 U.S. at 37, 126 S.Ct. at 525. “Periods of time between the commencement of the employee's first principal activity and the completion of his last principal activity on any workday must be included in the computation of hours worked....” 29 C.F.R. § 790.6; see Gorman v. Consol. Edison Corp., 488 F.3d 586, 591 (2d Cir.2007) (noting that “employees are paid for a continuous workday—which begins with the first principal activity and ends with the last”).

In light of this understanding of what constitutes compensable work under the FLSA, the relevant regulations, and case law, the Court will address each of the cross motions for partial summary judgment in turn.

III.

In their motion for partial summary judgment, the plaintiffs contend that the undisputed facts establish that donning and doffing smocks at Butterball's Ozark and Huntsville plants are integral and indispensable to the principal duties of the production employees at those plants.¹

“[A]ctivities performed either before or after the regular work shift,” the Supreme Court has noted, are compensable “if those activities are an integral and indispensable part of the principal activities.” Steiner v. Mitchell, 350 U.S. 247, 256, 76 S.Ct. 330, 100 L.Ed. 267 (1956); see also Mitchell v. King Packing Co., 350 U.S. 260, 261, 76 S.Ct. 337, 100 L.Ed. 282 (1956); 29 C.F.R. § 790.7(h) (1999) (“[A]n activity which is a ‘preliminary’ or ‘postliminary’ activity under one set of circumstances may be a principal activity under other conditions.”).

The Supreme Court's approach to this “principal,” “integral and indispensable” duty question is context-specific. To be “integral and indispensable,” an activity must be necessary to the principal work performed and done for the benefit of the employer. See Barrentine v. Arkansas–Best Freight Sys., Inc., 750 F.2d 47, 50 (8th Cir.1984), cert. denied, 471 U.S. 1054, 105 S.Ct. 2116, 85 L.Ed.2d 480 (1985); Dunlop v. City Elec., Inc., 527 F.2d 394, 398 (5th Cir.1976).

Alvarez v. IBP, Inc., 339 F.3d 894, 902–03 (9th Cir.2003), aff'd, ...