Source: Tom Johnston, MEATINGPLACE, 8/25/15


Tyson Foods has filed its opening brief in Supreme Court where the company is challenging lower-court rulings ordering a $5.8 million class-action payout to meat processing employees that sought overtime pay for time spent donning and doffing protective equipment, according to court filings.

Reiterating its position in previous case filings, Tyson contends the lower courts erred in certifying a class-action because doing so failed to account for different circumstances among individual employees and included hundreds of those who were not injured and therefore “have no legal right to any damages.”

More than a dozen amicae curae briefs, including those from Wal-Mart Stores and the National Association of Manufacturers, have followed on Tyson’s brief in a case some legal analysts say could change how wage-and-hour class actions are litigated.

Tyson pays employees at its Storm Lake, Iowa, pork plant in a “gang-time” system, which pays them “from the time the first piece of product passes their work stations until the last piece of product passes.” The company also pays a fixed amount of extra time called “K-Code” time to knife-wielding employees for donning/doffing related activities.

Employees at Storm Lake originally sued the company in 2007 claiming the company failed to compensate them for what they argue is overtime work. They sought and won class-action status. Tyson fought it, saying damages could only be determined on an individual basis.

Some 70 percent of the class that was certified was knife-wielding employees already receiving a fixed amount of extra “K-Code” time for donning/doffing-related activities.

“Plaintiffs did not challenge the gang-time system per se, nor did they argue that Tyson failed to pay the federal minimum wage,” Tyson states in its brief, which the company’s legal firm provided to Meatingplace. “They claimed, however, that the K-Code times were too low and, thus, that they were entitled to overtime compensation for unpaid time spent on donning/doffing, washing, and walking when those activities were undertaken by an employee who worked more than 40 hours in a workweek.”

The district court “viewed the unchallenged 'gang time compensation system’ as a 'tie that binds’ the class together under a single, common question of law,” according to the brief.

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