Reich v. Southern New England Telecommunications Corp.

• Decision Date: 14 June 1995
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 3:93CV01110 (TFGD).
• Citation: 892 F. Supp. 389
• Parties: Robert R. REICH, Secretary of Labor, United States Department of Labor, Plaintiff, v. SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND TELECOMMUNICATIONS CORP. and The Southern New England Telephone Company, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Connecticut

892 F. Supp. 389

Robert R. REICH, Secretary of Labor, United States Department of Labor, Plaintiff, v. SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND TELECOMMUNICATIONS CORP. and The Southern New England Telephone Company, Defendants.

Civ. No. 3:93CV01110 (TFGD).

United States District Court, D. Connecticut.

June 14, 1995.

Albert H. Ross, John S. Casler, James Glickman, Christine Eskilson, Merle D. Hyman, U.S. Dept. of Labor, Office of the Solicitor, Boston, MA, for plaintiff.

Burton Kainen, Miguel A. Escalera, Jr., Sheldon D. Myers, Vaughan Finn, Kainen, Starr, Garfield, Wright & Escalera, Hartford, CT, for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION

DALY, District Judge.

Robert R. Reich, the Secretary of Labor of the United States Department of Labor ("plaintiff"), brings this action against the Southern New England Telecommunications Corporation and the Southern New England Telephone Company (collectively "SNET") seeking to enjoin SNET from its alleged violation of sections 7, 11, 15(a)(2) and 15(a)(5), the overtime and record-keeping provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. § 201, et seq. ("FLSA"). The plaintiff also seeks back overtime pay and liquidated damages. Specifically, the plaintiff alleges that SNET has a company-wide policy of requiring their outside craft employees to remain on the jobsite and perform uncompensated work during their lunch periods in violation of the FLSA. The matter has been tried to the Court, and the parties have supplemented the record with post-trial briefs and proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law. This memorandum constitutes the Court's findings of fact and conclusions of law pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52(a).

FINDINGS OF FACT

SNET is and was, at all times relevant to the instant matter, a corporation having an office and place of business in New Haven, Connecticut engaged in a telecommunications business at that site and elsewhere throughout the state of Connecticut and is an enterprise within the meaning of sections 3(r) and 3(s) of the FLSA. SNET employees handle, sell or otherwise work on goods or materials that have been moved in or produced for commerce.

SNET operates various garages throughout Connecticut and employs numerous outside craft employees who work out of these garages. Prior to 1990, SNET categorized its outside craft employees as cable splicers, cable repairers and installation and maintenance workers. Beginning sometime in 1990 and continuing until February 1994, SNET's outside craft employees were categorized in three groups: outside plant technicians, assistant supervisors of construction or communications facilities technicians ("CFT"). 1/17/95 Testimony of Allen Lindsey.¹ Outside plant technicians place and remove outside telephone plant, that is, telephone cable, as well as install telephone poles. 1/9/95 Diamen; 1/9/95 Zabisky. Assista supervisors of construction work with outside plant technicians on certain types of tasks, such as installing telephone poles. 1/9/95 Diamen; 1/12/95 Stuyniski; 1/13/95 Schlaigh; 1/13/95 O'Neill; 1/13/95 Williams. The CFT job category combined the previously separate jobs of cable splicers, cable repairers, and installation and maintenance workers and was designed to cross-train these employees so that each CFT could perform all three job functions as the need arose. 1/10/95 Evans; 1/11/95 Phillips; 1/12/95 Estep; 1/12/95 Shea; 1/13/95 Bigelow; 1/13/95 Donofree; 1/17/95 Lindsey.

The work performed by outside craft employees in the CFT job category varied from employee to employee. Some employees, for example, performed mostly cable repair work; 1/11/95 Remick; while other employees performed primarily cable splicing work; 1/10/95 Evans; 1/11/95 Phillips; 1/12/95 Estep; 1/12/95 Carling; 1/13/95 Campbell; 1/13/95 Kelly; 1/13/95 Pomian; and still others' work was divided between all three job functions to varying degrees. 1/13/95 Donofree (50% splicing, 30% repair, 20% installation).

In February 1994 SNET eliminated the CFT job category and devised yet another way of categorizing its outside craft employees. 1/12/95 Shea; 1/17/95 Lindsey. Under this new category system, outside craft employees who performed cable splicing work were known as network deployment technicians. 1/9/95 Taccone; 1/9/95 Keyser; 1/9/95 Evans; 1/11/95 Carr; 1/11/95 Phillips; 1/12/95 Poe; 1/12/95 Avery; 1/12/95 Estep; 1/13/95 Donofree; 1/13/95 Kelly. Those outside craft employees who performed cable repair work were categorized as network delivery technicians. 1/10/95 Jennings; 1/10/95 Lankton; 1/11/95 Woll; 1/12/95 Haase; 1/12/95 Estep; 1/12/95 Shea; 1/13/95 Bigelow. Finally, those outside craft employees who performed installation and maintenance work were categorized as service delivery technicians. 1/10/95 Denny.

Outside craft employees, apart from those performing installation and maintenance functions, are assigned work at a variety of job sites. The three main job sites are manhole sites, aerial sites and buried trench sites. 1/9/95 Diamen; 1/9/95 Flynn; 1/10/95 Evans; 1/10/95 Emerson; 1/10/95 Lankton; 1/11/95 Woll; 1/11/95 Sweeney; 1/11/95 Phillips; 1/11/95 Carr; 1/13/95 Longo. Those employees performing installation and maintenance work may perform their work at outside locations from the side of a house to the terminal pole, as well as in residential homes and businesses. 1/10/95 Denny; 1/13/95 Pomian; 1/13/95 Kelly. A small amount of work is performed at central office locations and controlled environment vaults.

During the course of their employment and at all of the various job sites, outside craft employees work with valuable trucks and sophisticated tools, ranging from fresh air ventilation systems, sump pumps, gas testing equipment, bucket trucks, fiber optic equipment and numerous hand tools. 1/9/95 Zabisky; 1/9/95 Evans; 1/10/95 Emerson; 1/10/95 Lankton; 1/11/95 Phillips; 1/11/95 Carr; 1/12/95 Shea; 1/17/95 Bray. The work assignments of outside craft employees may last one day or more, depending upon the work assignment and location, while others may last anywhere from forty-five minutes up to one day. 1/9/95 Keyser; 1/10/95 Lankton; 1/10/95 Murray; 1/11/95 Carr; 1/12/95 Estep. These employees also face many variables when carrying out their work assignments, among them the weather, traffic conditions, the work of other contractors, the condition of the existing telephone plant and equipment, and numerous other circumstances that may arise on any given job on any given day. 1/12/95 Haase; 1/18/95 Weed.

Outside craft employees also are evaluated based on the amount of work they can complete in a certain amount of time. To assist in this evaluation, SNET has put in place a system designed to estimate the time requirements of certain tasks, the production expectations of the outside craft employees performing those tasks and to track the efficiency and success these employees achieve against such expectations. This system was called the Job Maintenance Operation System, and is known in SNET by its acronym, "JMOS." 1/10/95 Denny; 1/11/95 Phillips; 1/11/95 Sweeney; 1/13/95 Kochel; 1/13/95 Schlaich; 1/17/95 St. John; 1/20/95 Lawrence. Under JMOS, each work assignment step an employee performs is assigned a particular time estimate. 1/17/95 St. John. An employee's performance is then compared to the time expectations set forth by JMOS and the JMOS performance is compared by geographical area and by employee. 1/10/95 Denny; 1/17/95 St. John.

The outside craft employees are designated as "lunch-carrying" employees. That is, they are required to bring their lunches with them to work. 1/9/95 Diamen; 1/9/95 Taccone; 1/9/95 Keyser; 1/9/95 Zabisky; 1/10/95 Emerson; 1/10/95 Snow; 1/11/95 Woll; 1/13/95 Campbell; 1/13/95 Donofree; 1/17/95 Calkins; 1/20/95 Lawrence; 1/20/95 Albright. They are not paid pay for their lunch periods; 1/9/95 Diamen; 1/9/95 Zabisky; 1/9/95 Taccone; 1/10/95 Evans; 1/10/95 Snow; and SNET does not record as hours worked the lunch periods of their outside craft employees. 1/18/95 Rarus.

The duration of the lunch periods of outside craft employees is thirty minutes. 1/9/95 Diamen; 1/9/95 Flynn; 1/9/95 Taccone. Because of SNET's efforts to coordinate work activities with other field and central office employees, SNET generally instructs outside craft employees to take their half-hour lunch periods at 12:00 noon. 1/9/95 Zabisky; 1/9/95 Taccone; 1/10/95 Lankton; 1/11/95 Sweeney; 1/12/95 Haase; 1/12/95 Shea; 1/13/95 Kochel; 1/13/95 Donofree; 1/13/95 O'Neill; 1/17/95 Gardella; 1/17/95 Lindsey; 1/18/95 Judge; 1/18/95 Walsh; 1/18/95 Sims; 1/20/95 Lawrence. If an outside craft employee takes a later lunch due to conditions then existing at a particular job site, that employee is required to contact the project supervisor. 1/13/95 Donofree; 1/17/95 Bray; 1/20/95 Lawrence.

Due to the uncertain nature of how long it may take to perform their work, these employees generally do not have a large degree of flexibility to plan when and where they take their lunch periods. 1/11/95 Sweeney; 1/11/95 Remick; 1/12/95 Poe; 1/12/95 Haase; 1/13/95 Campbell; 1/20/95 Albright. On occasion, outside craft employees work through their lunches and are not paid for the time nor able to take a later lunch period. 1/9/95 Keyser; 1/9/95 Taccone; 1/10/95 Murray; 1/11/95 Remick; 1/12/95 Estep; 1/13/95 Bigelow. On other occasions, the employees are interrupted during their lunch periods and do not take extra time. 1/11/95 Sweeney; 1/12/95 Shea.

In those situations in which outside craft employees are at a job site where the work is not yet completed, known in SNET as an "open job site," they are required to remain on those job sites during lunch to provide for the safety and security for the job site, SNET's equipment and telephone plant, as well as provide for the security of any members of the public who might come into contact with the job site. These responsibilities at open job sites were impressed upon the employees by...