MR. JUSTICE REED delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor brought this action to enjoin the Rutherford Food Corporation and the Kaiser Packing Company from further violating the Fair Labor Standards Act.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, enacted June 25, 1938, is a part of the social legislation of the 1930's of the same general character as the National Labor Relations Act of July 5, 1935, 49 Stat. 449, and the Social Security Act of August 14, 1935, 49 Stat. 620. Decisions that define the coverage of the employer-employee relationship under the Labor and Social Security acts are persuasive in the consideration of a similar coverage under the Fair Labor Standards Act. See Labor Board v. Hearst Publications,
The petitioners are corporations of Missouri authorized to do business in Kansas. The slaughterhouse of the Kaiser Packing Company, the place of the alleged violations with which we are concerned, and the principal place of business of that company, is in Kansas City, Kansas, from which it ships meat in interstate commerce. Since 1942 most of its product has been boned beef. The petitioner, Rutherford Food Corporation, has its principal place of business and its plant for processing meat products in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1943, Rutherford bought 51% of the stock of Kaiser in order to assure itself of a constant supply of boned beef for contracts it had with the U.S. Army. Kaiser had been operating and continued to operate at a loss, and Rutherford advanced more than $50,000 to Kaiser between March, when Rutherford bought the Kaiser stock, and July, 1943. To assure itself of a continued supply of meat, Rutherford leased Kaiser's facilities and took over operation of the slaughterhouse in July. In May, 1944, the lease was terminated and Rutherford's stock interest in Kaiser sold, so that Kaiser might qualify for subsidies granted by the Defense Supplies Corporation to unaffiliated nonprocessing slaughterers under its Regulation No. 3.
Prior to 1942 Kaiser had one hourly paid employee who acted as a combined butcher, beef boner and order filler. During 1942, in order to be able to furnish beef boned to Army specifications to the Army under contract, Kaiser entered into a written contract with one Reed, an experienced boner, which provided that Reed should assemble a group of skilled boners to do the boning at the slaughterhouse. The terms of the contract were that Reed should be paid for the work of boning an amount per hundred-weight
The slaughterhouse operations, of which the boning is a part, are carried on in a series of interdependent steps.
The Administrator thought these facts brought the boners within the classification of employees, as that term is used in the Act. But the District Court thought that they were independent contractors, and denied the injunction sought by the Administrator. The Circuit Court of Appeals, however, said: "The operations at the slaughterhouse constitute an integrated economic unit devoted primarily to the production of boneless beef. Practically all of the work entering into the unit is done at one place and under one roof. . . . The boners work alongside admitted employees of the plant operator at their tasks. The task of each is performed in its natural order as a contribution to the accomplishment of a common objective." In its view the test for determining who was an employee under the Act was not the common law test of
The Fair Labor Standards Act was passed by Congress to lessen, so far as seemed then practicable, the distribution in commerce of goods produced under subnormal labor conditions. An effort to eliminate low wages and long hours was the method chosen to free commerce from the interferences arising from production of goods under conditions that were detrimental to the health and well-being of workers. It was sought to accomplish this purpose by the minimum pay and maximum hour provisions and the requirement that records of employees' services be kept by the employer.
As in the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act, there is in the Fair Labor Standards Act no definition that solves problems as to the limits of the employer-employee relationship under the Act. Provisions which have some bearing appear in the margin.
The District Court was of the view that:
We think, however, that the determination of the relationship does not depend on such isolated factors but rather upon the circumstances of the whole activity. Viewed in this way, the workers did a specialty job on the production line. The responsibility under the boning contracts without material changes passed from one boner to another. The premises and equipment of Kaiser were used for the work. The group had no business organization that could or did shift as a unit from one slaughterhouse to another. The managing official of the plant kept close touch on the operation. While profits to the boners depended upon the efficiency of their work, it was more like piecework than an enterprise that actually depended for success upon the initiative, judgment or foresight of the typical independent contractor. Upon the whole, we must conclude that these meat boners were employees of the slaughtering plant under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
It is so ordered.
FootNotes
"As used in this Act —
.....
"(d) `Employer' includes any person acting directly or indirectly in the interest of an employer in relation to an employee. . . .
"(e) `Employee' includes any individual employed by an employer.
.....
"(g) `Employ' includes to suffer or permit to work."
"At the time of the enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the phrase `employed, permitted or suffered to work' was contained in the child labor statutes of thirty-two States and the District of Columbia. The same phraseology appeared in the Uniform Child Labor Laws recommended in 1911 and in 1930 by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (Child Labor Bulletin, Vol. I, No. 2, August 1912: Proceedings of the National Conference, 1930), in the Standard Child Labor Law recommended in the Child Labor Legislation Handbook compiled by Josephine C. Goldmark (See e.g., issue of 1904, p. 11), and in the Standards Recommended for Child Labor Legislation by the International Association of Governmental Labor Officials. The phrase `employed or permitted to work' was found in seventeen State statutes as well as in the Federal statutes held unconstitutional in Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251, and Child Labor Tax Case, 259 U.S. 20. The statutes are cited in the Appendix to this brief, infra, pp. 58-60."
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