The Ninth Circuit has reversed a summary judgment entered in favor of the U.S. Postal Service, against several postal inspectors who claimed that they were entitled to overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. In Nigg v. United States Postal Service, three Postal Inspectors alleged that the Postal Service failed to pay Postal Inspectors their proper wages for (i) hours they worked in excess of forty-three hours per week and (ii) hours they worked on duty assignments. The trial court found that the plaintiffs could not assert claims under the FLSA because they were governed by a different compensation standard under 39 U.S.C. § 1003(c). The Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded the case for the District Court to analyze and determine their claims under the FLSA rather than Section 1003(c). The court's summary and holding are as follows:
This appeal principally involves the relationship between two labor statutes—the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and a 1996 statute related to compensation for postal inspectors, 39 U.S.C. § 1003(c). Robert Nigg, a postal inspector currently employed by the United States Postal Service (“the Postal Service”) and Keith Lewis, a retired postal inspector, sued the Postal Service alleging that the inspectors are entitled to overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA” or “the Act”), 29 U.S.C. §§ 201-219. The Postal Service does not pay postal inspectors FLSA overtime, instead claiming that their pay is governed by 39 U.S.C. § 1003(c). At issue is whether the compensation provision in § 1003(c) trumps the overtime provisions of the FLSA.
The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the Postal Service, reasoning that 39 U.S.C. § 1003(c), which requires the Postal Service to pay the inspectors on a basis of “comparability” to other similarly tasked executive branch employees, permits the Postal Service to provide “availability pay” rather than FLSA overtime. The court adopted the Postal Service’s argument that postal inspectors are comparable to certain other federal law enforcement officers who receive availability pay under the Law Enforcement Availability Pay Act, Pub. L. No. 103-329 § 633, 108 Stat. 2382 (1994).
FLSA overtime and availability pay differ significantly, both in terms of the hours of work required to qualify, and the way in which pay is calculated. For example, FLSA overtime entitles a covered employee to overtime pay for all hours worked in excess of 40 hours per week. See 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1). In contrast, availability pay requires a covered employee to work an average of two extra hours of overtime per day beyond the eight hour day for the entire year to be entitled to extra pay for the extra hours worked. See, e.g., 5 U.S.C. § 5545a(a)-(d).
FLSA’s overtime provisions presumptively apply to federal employees, such as the inspectors, unless a specific FLSA exemption applies. See 5 C.F.R. § 551.202(a) (“Each employee is presumed to be FLSA nonexempt unless the employing agency correctly determines that the employee clearly meets one or more of the exemption criteria[.]”). In enacting § 1003(c), Congress did not amend or repeal the FLSA, either explicitly or implicitly. We conclude that § 1003(c) is not clearly in conflict with the FLSA, and that Congress did not impliedly repeal the FLSA. See Moyle v. Dir., Office of Workers’ Comp. Programs, 147 F.3d 1116, 1120 (9th Cir. 1998) (“ ‘Repeals by implication . . . are not favored and will only be found when the new[er] statute is clearly repugnant, in words or purpose, to the old statute . . . .’ ”) (quoting Kee Leasing Co. v. McGahan (In re Glacier Bay), 944 F.2d 577, 581 (9th Cir. 1991)). We reverse the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the Postal Service and remand with instructions to consider whether the inspectors satisfy any FLSA exemption or are entitled to FLSA overtime.
You can download the full text of Nigg v. United States Postal Service here in pdf.
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