Walling v. Helmerich Payne
| Decision Date | 06 November 1944 |
| Docket Number | No. 27,27 |
| Parties | WALLING, Adm'r, Wage and Hour Division, U.S. Dept. of Labor, v. HELMERICH & PAYNE, Inc |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Mr. Irving J. Levy, of Washington, D.C., for petitioner.
Mr. Eugene O. Monnet, of Tulsa, Okl., for respondent.
We are concerned here with the question whether certain provisions of employment contracts relating to the computation and application of regular and overtime wage rates conform to the requirements of Section 7(a) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 1060, 29 U.S.C. § 201 et seq., 29 U.S.C.A. § 201 et seq.
Respondent is engaged in the production of oil and gas for interstate commerce and its employees admittedly are covered by the Act. Prior to October 24, 1938, the effective date of the Act, certain of respondent's employees worked eight, ten and twelve hour daily shifts, or 'tours,' and were paid a specified wage for each tour. These wages were in excess of the minimum required by the Act, though the number of tours per week would often cause an employee to work more than the maximum hours allowed by the Act without overtime pay being required.
In order to maintain the same wage levels after the Act became effective, respondent made new employment contracts with the employees in question whereby they received their wages under the so-called 'Poxon' or split-day plan. This plan arbitrarily divided each regular tour into two parts for purposes of calculating and applying hourly wage rates. The first four hours of each eight hour tour, the first five hours of each ten hour tour and the first five hours of each twelve hour tour were assigned a specified hourly rate described as the 'base or regular rate.' The remaining hours in each tour were treated as 'overtime' and called for payment at one and one-half times the 'base or regular rate.' The contracts then recited that the 'base rate' set forth 'shall never apply to more than 40 hours in any work week.'
These so-called 'regular' and 'overtime' hourly rates were calculated so as to insure that the total wages for each tour would continue the same as under the original contracts,1 thereby avoiding the necessity of increasing wages or decreasing hours of work as the statutory maximum workweek of 40 hours became effective.2 Only in the extremely unlikely case where an employee's tours totalled more than 80 hours in a week3 did he become entitled to any pay in addition to the regular tour wages that he would have received prior to the adoption of the split-day plan. Until more than 80 hours had been worked the plan operated so that the employee could not be credited with more than 40 hours of 'regular' work, the remaining time being denominated 'overtime.' Hence, since the wages under the old system and under the split-day plan were identical, the original tour rates could be used as the simple method of computing wages for each pay period. The actual and regular workweek was accordingly shorn of all significance.
The District Court and the Circuit Court of Appeals both held that the split-day plan of compensation, under the decision of this Court in Walling v. Belo Corp., 316 U.S. 624, 62 S.Ct. 1223, 86 L.Ed. 1716, did not violate the provisions of Section 7(a) of the Fair Labor Standards Act. We cannot agree.
Section 7(a) limits to 40 a week the number of hours that an employer may employ any of his employees subject to the Act, unless the employee receives compensation for his employment in excess of 40 hours at a rate 'not less than one and one-half times the regular rate at which he is employed.' The split-day plan here in issue satisfies neither the purpose nor the mechanics of this requirement.
As we pointed out in Overnight Motor Co. v. Missel, 316 U.S. 572, 577, 578, 62 S.Ct. 1216, 1219, 1220, 86 L.Ed. 1682, the Congressional purpose in enacting Section 7(a) was twofold: (1) to spread employment by placing financial pressure on the employer through the overtime pay requirement, see also Southland Gasoline Co. v. Bayley, 319 U.S. 44, 48, 63 S.Ct. 917, 919, 87 L.Ed. 1244; and (2) to compensate employees for the burden of a workweek in excess of the hours fixed in the Act. Yet neither objective could be attained under the split-day plan. It enabled respondent to avoid paying real overtime wages for at least the first 40 hours worked in excess of the statutory maximum workweek, thus negativing any possible effect such a payment might have had upon the spreading of employment. And the plan was so designed as to deprive the employees of their statutory right to receive for all hours worked in excess of the first regular 40 hours one and one-half times the actual regular rate. The statutory maximum workweek of 40 hours was by contract twisted into an 80 hour maximum workweek. No plan so obviously inconsistent with the statutory purpose can lay a claim to legality.
The split-day plan, moreover, violated the basic rules for computing correctly the actual regular rate contemplated by Section 7(a). While the words 'regular rate' are not defined in the Act, they obviously mean the hourly rate actually paid for the normal, non-overtime workweek. Overnight Motor Co. v. Missel, supra. To compute this regular rate for respondent's employees, assuming the same wages and tours, required only the simple process of dividing the wages received for each tour by the number of hours in that tour.4 This regular rate was then applicable to the first 40 hours regularly worked on the tours and the overtime rate (150% of the regular rate) became effective as to all hours worked in excess of 40.
But respondent's plan made no effort to base the regular rate upon the wages actually received or upon the hours actually and regularly spent each week in working. Nor did it attempt to apply the regular rate to the first 40 hours actually and regularly worked. Instead the plan provided for a fictitious regular rate consisting of a figure somewhat lower than the rate actually received. This illusory rate was arbitrarily allocated to the first portion of each day's regular labor; the latter portion was designated 'overtime' and called for compensation at a rate one and one-half times the fictitious regular rate. Thus when an employee on regular eight hour tours had actually worked 40 hours, respondent could point to the employee's contract and claim that he had worked only 20 'regular' hours and 20 '...
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