Should city employees be compensated for taking work home with them?
That was the question addressed by the court in Singh v. City of New York, where six fire alarm inspectors alleged they were denied overtime pay in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA"). The plaintiffs' duties require them to perform an average of five inspections per day, Monday through Thursday. They typically travel to the first inspection site directly from home and carry all pertinent documents with them. At the end of each day, the inspectors clock-out at the nearest firehouse and return directly home with all the paperwork.*
The plaintiffs alleged that the FLSA entitled them to overtime compensation for the time spent commuting to and from work with those inspection documents, and, for the time spent at home completing paperwork and other work-related activities.
A Judge of the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York, reviewed the FLSA generally, before turning to the specific issues at hand, and noted that while the FLSA's purpose is to guarantee that employees are compensated for all "work" performed, Congress did not define what the word "work" encompassed. As a result, the District Court turned to the Supreme Court's decision in Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., which established what is known as the "de minimis doctrine."
That particular doctrine provides that compensable work occurs when an employee devotes a substantial amount of time and effort to an employer sanctioned activity. As a result, courts will disregard tasks which present slight inconveniences or add minimal time to scheduled work hours. To that end, three factors are used to determine whether a given activity is de minimis:
- the administrative difficulty of recording the additional time;
- the size of the claim in the aggregate; and
- whether the employee performed the task in question on a regular basis.
With regard to the time spent commuting to and from work, the District Court determined that the City was entitled to summary judgment in its favor. The Department of Labor, as well as a number of reported cases, guide that commuting to and from work is not compensable, regardless of whether an employee works at a fixed location or different job sites. While the plaintiffs claimed their briefcases weighed about fifteen pounds and prolonged their travel time, they conceded that their bags did not alter the distance, method, duration, or any other manner of their commute once they reached public transportation.
As there was no "reliable" way of recording the extra time plaintiffs purportedly expended carrying their briefcases, (as opposed to the time spent on normal travel), and in view of the "substantial administrative difficulty" that the City would face "monitoring and recording such activity," the court characterized any inconvenience experienced by the inspectors as de minimis in nature and unworthy of supplemental compensation.
With regard to work done at home, the District Court concluded there were questions of fact which warranted a formal hearing or trial. Before an employee may be compensated for work performed outside a scheduled shift, the employer most know or have reason to know the employee was undertaking such activity and that the effort was "suffered" or "permitted" by the employer. In this case, there was no dispute that the plaintiffs performed work-related tasks which comprised a significant and substantial activity within the FLSA's meaning. However, there was disagreement over whether the City had authorized such activity and what impact that lack of authorization had on the employees' claims.
Depending on how this all works out, New York City could get hit with substantial back-pay claims. And we, the taxpayers, could be left holding the briefcase bag.
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* Inspectors report to the office on Fridays to complete their administrative chores and secure their assignments for the following week.