By Erica Shelley Nelson and Brennen Johnson
In Misewicz v. City of Memphis, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by over one hundred firefighters against the City of Memphis, Tennessee. The firefighters sued the City in an attempt to obtain overtime wages for time outside of their regular work hours that they spent participating in paramedic training. The Court determined that the City was not obligated to compensate the firefighters for that time because the City successfully complied with a provision of the Department of Labor regulations that provides circumstances where public employers need not compensate their employees for time spent in training.
In October of 2007, the City of Memphis implemented a policy requiring that all firefighters hired after October 29, 2007, become certified as paramedics. The firefighters bringing the lawsuit were all hired after that date and were therefore subject to this policy. When the firefighters were hired, they signed agreements that they would become licensed as paramedics within three years of employment with the fire department, as a condition of continued employment. However, the City did not inform the firefighters that the training would be uncompensated or off-duty. All of the firefighters undertook the training, but when the City failed to compensate them for their time spent in becoming licensed, they decided to sue to recover wages for their lost time.
To support their claim, the firefighters indicated that the Fair Labor Standards Act requires that employers pay their employees a wage for each hour worked and overtime for hours worked in excess of forty in a workweek. They also pointed out that under this law, time spent attending training meetings is generally considered compensable. Furthermore, the firefighters asserted that they should receive wages for their time because, when hired, the City failed to inform them that this extra training would be uncompensated, and state law did not require firefighters to be registered as paramedics.
Although employers usually must pay employees for their time spent in training, the City indicated that exceptions exist to this general requirement. Specifically, they indicated a provision in the law stating that employees of state and local governments are not entitled to compensation for specialized training occurring outside of regular working hours that is “required by law for certification of public and private sector employees.” They argued that under this provision, they were exempt from paying for the firefighters’ training because it was specialized paramedic training; it occurred outside of regular work hours; and state law required this particular training and licensing before an employee could engage in paramedic activities.
After reflecting on the text of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Court recognized that an exception to the general rule (that employers must compensate employees for their time in training) clearly existed. It determined that public employers need not compensate employees for specialized training outside of regular work hours, so long as that training is required by law. It noted, however, that the key dispute between the firefighters and the City was whether this exception for training “required by law” should be required for the job description provided to an employee at time of hire or the activities an employer regularly requires of its employees in the course of their duties. The Court explained:
“[The firefighters] insist that the relevant issue is whether state law requires firefighters to be cross-trained as paramedics. They then reiterate that the undisputed facts show that the paramedic cross-training requirement was an MFD [Memphis Fire Department] policy that the MFD imposed on itself and that neither Tennessee law nor any other law requires that… firefighters be cross-trained… The City of Memphis responds that [the exception] applies because [the] firefighters were, in fact, hired to be firefighter/paramedics and that there is no question that they were regularly assigned to perform paramedic duties.”
After clarifying these basic positions, the Court returned to the bare language of the law that created the relevant exception to the typical pay for training requirement:
“From the face of the regulation, it does not appear that it is dispositive whether employees are informed when they are hired of all the duties that they will be expected to perform that require state certification… Moreover, the relevant Tennessee laws and regulations defining who must undergo training to be certified as a paramedic do so by focusing on the duties performed. Thus, individuals who actually perform paramedic-level care must be certified; it does not matter if they are hired as paramedics by their employers. Therefore, under [the exception], the determination of whether training “is required by law for certification” should focus on whether the employer actually hired the employee to perform duties that require state certification, as judged by whether the employee is asked regularly to perform those duties after training… In this case… the [firefighters] were asked to spend half their time performing paramedic duties… Thus, the MFD hired [them] to perform both fire-fighting and paramedic duties.”
The Court held that because state law required the firefighters to attend training in order to legally perform the paramedic duties demanded by their public employer, the City was not required to compensate them for that training. However, the Court also noted that a different result might have arisen if the City had required the firefighters to attend the training, but did not actually require them to perform paramedic duties. As the Court ultimately framed the issue, whether or not public employers must compensate employees for specialized training outside of regular work hours depends on (1) whether the employee performs duties that legally require certification and (2) whether the training is necessary for that certification.
This result is consistent with some of the tension between the FLSA workplace wage and hour standards and other statutes that exempt public sector employees from pay under discrete circumstances. Nevertheless, the Sixth Circuit seemed to stretch to find in favor of the Department. Under the facts of this case, it was pretty clear that a paramedic certification was not “required by law” to be a firefighter in Tennessee. The fact that the Department wanted its firefighters to be certified paramedics is a separate issue from whether a paramedic certification is required “by law” in order to work as a firefighter (which it clearly is not). I think this case could easily have been decided in favor of the firefighters, perhaps in a different jurisdiction.
