Jordan v. Ibp, Inc.

• Citation: 542 F.Supp.2d 790
• Decision Date: 31 March 2008
• Docket Number: No. 3:02-cv-1132.,3:02-cv-1132.
• Parties: Emily D. JORDAN, et al., on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. IBP, INC. and Tyson Foods, Inc., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Middle District of Tennessee

Page 790

542 F.Supp.2d 790

Emily D. JORDAN, et al., on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. IBP, INC. and Tyson Foods, Inc., Defendants.

No. 3:02-cv-1132.

United States District Court, M.D. Tennessee, . Nashville Division.

March 31, 2008.

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Charles P. Yezbak, III, Yezbak Law Offices, Nashville, TN, Gregory K. McGillivary, Heidi R. Burakiewicz, Lauren E. Schwartzreich, Molly A. Elkin, Woodley & McGillivary, Washington, DC, for Plaintiffs.

Evangeline G. Paschal, Joel Mark Cohn, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP, Washington, DC, John Randolph Bibb, Jr., Waller, Lansden, Dortch & Davis, LLP, Jonathan Jacob Cole, Kenneth A. Weber, Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC, Nashville, TN, Michael John Mueller, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP, Washington, DC, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM

ALETA A. TRAUGER, District Judge.

Pending before the court is the motion for partial summary judgment with respect to liability filed by the plaintiffs (Docket No. 236), to which the defendants have responded (Docket No. 244), and the plaintiffs have replied (Docket No. 253).

Also pending before the court is the defendants' motion to decertify (Docket No. 234), to which the plaintiffs have responded (Docket No. 245). Asserting that the plaintiffs' response raised new arguments, the defendants combined their reply with a second motion to decertify a broader claim than that which they initially moved to decertify. (Docket Nos. 250, 251.) The plaintiffs have moved to strike this second motion and portions of the defendants' reply (Docket No. 255), and the defendants responded to the motion to strike (Docket No. 256).

BACKGROUND

This case represents yet another chapter in a long history of litigations that span multiple fora, all of which involve one or both of the defendants here and the question of whether their compensation practices violate the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA"), 29 U.S.C. §§ 201 et seq. These defendants, individually or collectively, have now been litigating this same issue for decades, reflecting what can only be described as a deeply-entrenched resistance to changing their compensation practices to comply with the requirements of FLSA. Most notably, beginning in 1988, the Department of Labor brought suit against IBP in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas (the "DoL Litigation"), which culminated in the issuance, in July 1996, of a company-wide permanent injunction requiring IBP to comply with the overtime and recordkeeping provisions of FLSA. See Garcia v. Tyson Foods, Inc., 474 F.Supp.2d 1240, 1242-43 (D.Kan.2007) (discussing history of DoL Litigation). In an earlier ruling in this case denying the defendants' motion for summary judgment,¹ the court reviewed the history of the DoL Litigation in detail and considered the effect that the DoL Litigation and the injunction would have on this matter, holding, essentially, that the parties here are not barred from litigating the issue of compensability of certain activities under FLSA, although those issues also were addressed in the DoL Litigation. See Jordan v. IBP, Inc., No. 3:02-1132, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 30490 (M.D.Tenn. Oct. 13, 2004).

The plaintiffs in this matter are hourly employees or former hourly employees of the defendants who work or worked at the defendants' beef and pork processing plant in Goodlettsville, Tennessee (the "Goodlettsville Plant"). On November 21, 2002, the plaintiffs filed this collective action on behalf of themselves and other similarly situated employees alleging that, since the time the defendants commenced operations at the Goodlettsville Plant in April 2001, hourly employees working on the production floor have been denied compensation in violation of FLSA. Specifically, the plaintiffs allege that they have been denied compensation for work performed before the official start of their shifts and work performed after the official clock-out time, in that they are required to don and doff certain clothing and gear during those periods, which activity also requires collecting gear, sanitizing gear, stowing gear, walking, and waiting. The plaintiffs additionally allege that they have been denied compensation for work performed during uncompensated meal periods, in that they are required to engage in production work during meal periods and to don and doff clothing and gear prior to and after eating. The plaintiffs seek a declaratory judgment that the defendants have willfully and wrongfully violated their statutory and legal obligations under FLSA, request a complete and accurate accounting of all compensation to which they might be entitled, and seek monetary damages in the form of back pay and other entitlements and liquidated damages equal to their unpaid compensation as provided for by FLSA.

This matter is before the court at this point on the plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment with respect to liability, in which the plaintiffs argue that summary judgment should be granted with respect to their claims that (1) the defendants failed to compensate them for time spent performing pre- and post-production donning and doffing and related activities; (2) the defendants failed to provide them with a bona fide meal period; (3) the defendants are not entitled to a good faith defense to their claims; and (4) the defendants are not entitled to a good faith reduction in liquidated damages. Additionally, the defendants have moved to decertify certain of the plaintiffs' claims. Those motions, and the motion to strike filed by the plaintiffs and relating to the defendants' motion to decertify, are the subject of this memorandum.

FACTS

The plaintiffs work at the Goodlettsville Plant in a variety of hourly positions, including that of Trimmer, Styler, Knifer, Trainer, Inspector, and Tray Transfer Employee. (Docket No. 1 ¶ 3.)

The defendants maintain time clocks on the production floor at the Goodlettsville Plant, and employees clock in and out every shift.² (Docket No. 244 App. ¶ 14.) However, the defendants use the clock-in time primarily for attendance purposes and not to determine when an employee begins working for compensation purposes. (Docket No. 244 App. ¶¶ 15-18.) Instead, employees are compensated, according to the defendants' "Alternative Time and Attendance System," from a pre-determined "Pay Start Time," which is a set time that corresponds to the time at which the defendants estimate that the first piece of meat will arrive at the employee's station on the production line, until the employee clocks out as he leaves the production floor at the end of the shift. (Docket No. 244 App. ¶¶ 7-8, 11).

All production floor employees at the Goodlettsville Plant are required to wear company-issued sanitary frocks while they are on the production floor and may be subject to discipline for failing to do so.³ (Docket No. 244 App. ¶¶ 24, 30, 39.) Because the frocks are required to maintain sanitary conditions on the production floor, employees are prohibited from — and may be subject to discipline for — wearing the frocks outside the plant, in restrooms, or in the cafeteria. (Docket No. 244 App. ¶¶ 30, 125.) Employees are also prohibited from taking the frocks home. (Docket No. 244 App. ¶ 38.)

Prior to the start of their shifts, employees report to the locker room at the Goodlettsville Plant, where they retrieve clean frocks from their assigned lockers and don those frocks.⁴ (Docket No. 244 App. ¶ 32.) Additionally, employees retrieve a set of standard gear — including hard hats, hair and beard nets, and ear protection — from their lockers and don that gear. (Docket No. 244 App. ¶ 63.) In addition to this standard gear, some employees are required to wear certain specialized gear based on their particular position on the production line. For example, employees who use knives⁵ must wear or use special cut-resistant gloves, belly guards, protective sleeves, forearm guards, scabbards, steels, meat hooks, and hook holders.⁶ (Docket No. 244 App. ¶¶ 71, 75, 82, 88, 97, 102, 110). Prior to beginning work on the production line, knife-users retrieve this gear from their lockers. (Docket No. 244 App. ¶¶ 73, 80, 87, 91, 99-100, 109, 114.) Employees may be disciplined for failing to wear any of the required standard or specialized gear on the production line. (Docket No. 244 App. ¶¶ 64, 123.)

After donning their frocks and standard gear and retrieving any specialized gear they are required to wear, all employees report to the production hallway, where they wash their hands, wait for supervisors to open the production floor doors, and walk through a sanitizing foot bath onto the production floor. (Docket No. 244 App. ¶ 129(f-h).) Employees obtain rubber or latex gloves, sanitize the gloves, and don the gloves over their frocks before beginning work on the production line.⁷ (Docket No. 244 App. ¶¶ 55-60.) Knife users sanitize and don their specialized gear and retrieve and use a steel to straighten the edge of their knives before reporting to their work stations. (Docket No. 244 App. ¶¶ 116-17; 129(i-k; n)).

It is undisputed that this donning of frocks and gear, as well as the attendant collecting, sanitizing, walking, and waiting, occur before work on the production line begins and, thus, before each employee's Pay Start Time. (Docket No. 244 App. ¶¶ 20, 37, 56-60, 63, 121, 129.) This time is therefore uncompensated, save for four minutes per day for which knife-users are compensated pursuant to the DoL Litigation. (Docket No. 244 App. ¶¶ 19, 20, 37, 129; Docket No. 252 ¶ 1.) The plaintiffs estimate that these pre-production activities take approximately twenty to thirty minutes per day to complete. (Docket No. 244 App. ¶ 130.) The defendants, by contrast, assert that these pre-production activities take no longer than seven minutes. (Docket No. 244 App. ¶ 130.)

At the end of their shifts,...