Issue
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently addressed the issue of whether an employer had to pay overtime to its employees who resided on the employer’s remote premises and were assigned 24-hour duty shifts. (Brigham v. Eugene Water & Electric Board, (2004 Daily Journal, D.A.R. 1263, 9th Cir. (Or.) Feb. 03, 2004)
Facts
The City of Eugene, Oregon, through the Eugene Water & Electric Board (Board), stationed four of its employees at the Carmen Smith Hydroelectric Project. The employees are required to live (along with their families) on-site in housing provided by the Board. The employees worked four-day weeks – typically, three ten-hour “maintenance” shifts and one “duty” shift that lasted a full 24 hours. Although the employees performed only about six hours of scheduled work during the course of a duty shift, they were paid for ten hours of work. Between their maintenance and duty shifts, the employees were often on some form of duty status – either performing actual maintenance or on standby – for as much as 60 hours per week. The employees filed a wage-and-hour lawsuit, claiming they had not been compensated for their duty shift on-call time. The federal district court ruled in favor of the Board and the employees appealed.
Appellate Court Decision
The Court of Appeals addressed the issue of whether the uncompensated 14 hours of each 24-hour duty shift constituted compensable working time within the meaning of the Fair Labor Standards Act. In reaching its decision, the court focused on the agreement of the parties and concluded they had “agreed that duty-shift call time was equivalent to about four hours’ actual work on a maintenance shift.” This was a reasonable agreement considering that emergency call-outs were infrequent, allowing the employees to enjoy long periods of uninterrupted personal time.
Finding the agreement reasonable, the court next noted that, while the employees typically worked three maintenance shifts and one duty shift, the record indicated the employees were often on duty for more time than that – up to 60 or more hours in a week. However, there were no time sheets in the record. Therefore, the Court sent the case back to the district court to determine how many hours the employees actually worked and to apply the formula that equated duty shift call time to about four hours of actual work on a maintenance shift.
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