Employers and employees need to be aware of the requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. This allows workers to be sure they receive all the wages they deserve and permits employers to be confident that they are compliant with federal law. Whether you are a worker or an employer, if you have questions regarding the FLSA and related statutes (like the Portal-to-Portal Act), get reliable answers by seeking out the advice of an experienced Atlanta wage-and-hour lawyer.
One of the things the Portal-to-Portal Act requires for time to be compensable is that the activity was “integral and indispensable.” A recent unpaid overtime case from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals provides a clear example of what it means to be “indispensable.”
The case involved the pay practices of a commercial plumbing company based in Alabama. The company had a shop in Shelby County that housed company-owned trucks, parts, and supplies. Although many plumbers stopped at the shop on their way to job sites, the employer followed a policy that employees’ compensable time started when they arrived at the job site, not when they arrived at the employer’s shop.
A group of six plumbers sued the employer under the FLSA. The plumbers contended that they were entitled to be paid for the time spent traveling between the shop and the job site, and that the employer had illegally failed to compensate them for that time.
The courts, however, concluded that the employer was correct and its pay practices did not violate the law. The Portal-to-Portal Act states that employers are not required to pay employees for time spent “traveling to and from the actual place of performance of the principal activity or activities.” The Supreme Court has clarified that “principal activity” includes all activities that are “integral and indispensable” to the principal work. Furthermore, the Supreme Court provided a definition for “indispensable” in 2014, which stated that “indispensable means a duty that cannot be dispensed with, remitted, set aside, disregarded, or neglected.”
In other words, for time to be compensable, the plumbers needed to show that stopping at the shop was an indispensable part of doing their jobs.
One of the plumbers testified that some plumbers drove their personal vehicles throughout the day without stopping at the shop. The company’s owner testified that only about one-half of the company’s employees stopped by the shop on their way to job sites in the morning.
What is ‘Indispensable’… and What is Not
According to the courts, the fact that some employees drove directly from home to their job sites — without stopping at the shop at all — conclusively proved that stopping at the shop was not an indispensable activity. If some plumbers could carry out all of the essential aspects of their jobs without visiting the shop, then stopping at the shop could not be an “indispensable” activity.
The shop’s closure further strengthened the employer’s argument. The employer closed the shop entirely in 2022, but as the court noted, “continued to perform the principal activity of employment” in the years after it closed the shop.
In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that a meat processing company had to compensate workers for the time they spent walking between the location where they put on and took off protective equipment and where they performed the actual meat processing work. That contrasts with the plumbing company’s situation because the meat workers could not do their jobs without the protective equipment. The plumbers, by contrast, could—and many did—complete their jobs without visiting the shop. As a result, the law did not require the employer to compensate the plumbers for the time spent traveling from the shop to job sites.
The issues of whether travel time is compensable and whether an activity is indispensable under the Portal-to-Portal Act can be nuanced and may seem murky to a layperson. If you have questions about this sometimes-complicated area of the law, talk to the Atlanta wage-and-hour attorneys at the law firm of Parks, Chesin & Walbert. Our team has a thorough and in-depth understanding of the FLSA, the Portal-to-Portal Act, and all relevant wage and hour laws. Contact us through this website or at 404-873-8048 to schedule a consultation today.