Skidmore v. Swift & Co.
The Supreme Court ruled that a lower court was wrong to assume waiting time can never count as working time under the Fair Labor Standards Act, and sent a group of plant firefighters' overtime claim back for a proper factual inquiry into whether their fire-hall duty counted as work.
The decision means courts must look closely at the actual arrangement between employer and employee -- how free workers were to use on-call time for themselves -- rather than applying a blanket rule that idle waiting time is automatically excluded from paid hours.
“The law does not impose an arrangement upon the parties. It imposes upon the courts the task of finding what the arrangement was.”
Explains that courts must determine the actual working arrangement rather than applying a fixed legal rule.
How it got here: A federal trial court ruled against the employees' overtime claim and the Fifth Circuit affirmed; the employees brought the case to the Supreme Court.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Seven employees at a Swift and Company meatpacking plant in Fort Worth, Texas worked daytime shifts but also agreed to remain in a company-provided fire hall several nights a week, ready to respond to fire alarms. They were paid a small extra amount per alarm answered but received no additional pay for the waiting time itself, despite having sleeping quarters, games, and a radio available. They sued for unpaid overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
The question before the Court
If firefighters at a meatpacking plant had to stay in the fire hall overnight, ready to respond to alarms, does that on-call time count as work hours under federal overtime law?
The Court's answer
Not automatically -- the Court held that waiting time and working time are not mutually exclusive, so on-call time like the firefighters' overnight fire-hall duty can count as compensable work depending on the facts. The lower court had wrongly assumed waiting time could never be work, so the case needed to be reconsidered.
The Court instructed that courts must examine the real employment arrangement -- the agreement, how it was carried out, the nature of the duties, and how much freedom employees had during idle time -- rather than apply a blanket rule. It also explained that the Labor Department Administrator's interpretive guidance, while not binding, deserves respectful consideration based on its thoroughness and consistency. The case was sent back for the trial court to make proper factual findings.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Workers who must stay on employer premises or nearby, ready to respond to emergencies, may be entitled to overtime pay for that time even if they spend much of it sleeping or relaxing. Employers in industries with on-call or standby shifts must carefully document these arrangements, since courts will scrutinize the real conditions of on-call time rather than assume it doesn't count as work.
What changes now
The case is sent back to the trial court, which must now make proper factual findings about whether the employees' fire-hall waiting time constituted compensable work, considering the nature of their agreement, how freely they could use the time for themselves, and the Administrator's guidance. This is a final merits ruling on the legal question, but the ultimate outcome for these workers' overtime pay depends on further proceedings.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether these particular employees are owed overtime pay -- it only held that the trial court applied the wrong legal standard. The actual factual determination of whether their on-call time counted as work is left for the lower court to resolve on remand.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court reaffirmed, as it held in the companion Armour case, that no rule in the statute or prior decisions bars waiting time from also counting as working time -- the two are not mutually exclusive categories.
- The Court explained that whether on-call waiting time is compensable work is a factual question, not a legal formula, requiring trial courts to examine the actual agreement between the parties, how it played out in practice, the nature of the duties, and all surrounding circumstances.
- The Court noted that Congress assigned this fact-finding role to the courts rather than to an administrative agency, but it also created an Administrator position with specialized experience in these on-call-time problems.
- The Court discussed the weight courts should give to the Administrator's interpretive rulings: while not binding like a higher court's decision, they reflect accumulated expertise and reasoned judgment, and are entitled to respect proportional to the thoroughness of their reasoning and consistency with other pronouncements -- a standard later known as Skidmore deference.
- Applying that framework, the Court found the trial court's conclusion had been skewed by an erroneous legal premise -- that waiting time categorically could not be work -- rather than a genuine factual assessment of whether these particular firefighters' on-call time was compensable.