Court: Truckers entitled to ‘sleeper berth’ time

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By Erik T. Berkman

BOSTON — In a case of first impression, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that long-haul truckers driving as a team are entitled to be paid for “sleeper berth time” in excess of eight hours in a 24-hour period.

The employer, defendant CRST Expedited, uses a “team driving model” to transport goods nationwide in which two drivers ride in a truck, alternating between driving and resting in the vehicle’s sleeper berth.

Per trip, CRST pays each driver half the total number of miles at a per-mile rate corresponding with their level of experience. That means their hourly rate can be calculated by dividing the pay they receive by the total number of hours they work.

U.S. Department of Labor compensation regulations allow employers to deduct up to eight hours of sleeping time from each 24-hour period when calculating an employee’s compensation.

Meanwhile, under the U.S. Department of Transportation’s “hours of service regulations,” each driver can be “on duty” for up to 14 hours at a time, during which they can drive for up to 11 hours, spending the remaining three hours on non-driving duties such as loading and unloading. After those 14 hours, they must take at least 10 consecutive hours of “off-duty” time.

Much of the off-duty time is time is spent in the sleeper berth while the other team member is driving. DOT regulations also specifically exclude time resting in the sleeper berth from “on-duty” time.

Driver Juan Carlos Montoya, lead plaintiff in a collective action, alleged that CRST’s refusal to compensate him for hours spent in the sleeper berth beyond the DOL’s eight excludable hours resulted in him being paid less than minimum wage in violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.

CRST countered that none of the time Montoya and similarly situated drivers spend in the sleeper berth should be considered work under the FLSA because that time is predominantly to the driver’s benefit, not the employer’s, and because of the DOT’s exclusion of sleeper berth time from on-duty time.

The 1st Circuit disagreed.

“The DOT regulations concern driver and road safety and, unlike the FLSA, do not address worker compensation,” Judge Kermit V. Lipez wrote for the court. “Indeed, the DOT itself has recognized that using DOT classifications of ‘off-duty’ time to guide issues of compensability is misplaced and can result in employers circumventing the FLSA’s requirements.”

As for CRST’s argument that sleeping berth time was for the benefit of the employee, Lipez said the panel found it “unpersuasive considering the drivers’ physical confinement in a restrictive space that is ill-equipped for many activities.”

The 37-page decision is Montoya, et al. v. CRST Expedited, Inc., et al.

‘Consistent with the law’

Plaintiffs’ counsel Hillary Schwab of Boston said the ruling is consistent with the law.

“The case is important for anybody who is subject to both Department of Transportation and Department of Labor regulations and clarifies that employers have to ensure that they comply with wage laws and not just DOT safety regulations,” Schwab said. “This obviously has a big impact for truck drivers, but I would suppose it also provides guidance as to what constitutes working time for any employer who has people on duty for long periods, including sleep time.”

Cambridge, Massachusetts, attorney Michaela C. May, who submitted an amicus brief on behalf of the Massachusetts Employment Lawyers Association, said at first glance the case appears to concern a narrow predatory employment practice for a discrete group of workers.

But in reality, she said, the suit is about the time-honored rule that time spent primarily for the employer’s benefit must be paid under the FLSA.

“Here, the truckers were confined to a small, noisy, moving space, and they couldn’t have a social life, see their families, or go to the bathroom during these periods,” May said. “There’s a lot of work situations where time is primarily for the employer and the employee has to get paid for it, and this was an important concept to reaffirm.”

Rebecca E. Filippo, a labor and employment attorney in Providence, Rhode Island, found noteworthy the panel’s emphasis on the fact that drivers are typically traveling during their sleeper berth time, which suggests the employee’s continuous travel is important to the employer’s business.

“The analysis of this factor could help determine future claims of whether time commuting or traveling for work may be compensable under certain limited circumstances,” Filippo said.

CRST’s attorney, James H. Hanson of Indianapolis, did not respond to requests for comment.

Alleged FLSA violation

CRST provides trucking services across North America and runs a driver training program for aspiring long-haul drivers.

Montoya was a trainee driver in “phase three” of his training, in which he had earned a license and gone through a practicum and was now working under an eight- to 10-month contract that paired him with a more experienced driver. One driver would be off duty and in the sleeper berth for DOT purposes while the other was driving. The drivers would switch when the off-duty driver completed the required 10-hour period.

The approach enabled the company to keep its trucks in near-continuous motion for multiple days while complying with DOT limits on how many hours a driver could spend behind the wheel.

During sleeper berth times, drivers could sleep in their bunk, prepare food, connect to the internet if available, read or watch TV. When teammates swapped places at a rest stop, drivers could leave to eat, use the rest room, or attend to other needs.

In November 2014, Montoya completed an 1,871-mile trip from Iowa to Oregon.

Montoya was paid for 935.5 miles at a rate of $0.25 per mile under CRST’s pay scale. He also received a $100 signing bonus, resulting in a total wage of $333.88 for the trip.

His payroll statement said he worked a total of 33 hours per CRST’s definition of “hours worked.” He also logged nearly 16 hours of “excess” sleeper berth time beyond the eight hours per day CRST could exclude under DOL regulations.

If the excess sleeper berth time was not included when calculating Montoya’s hourly pay, he received $10.12 an hour ($333.88 for 33 hours worked). However, if the excess sleeper berth time was included, he received only $6.87 an hour ($333.88 for 48.61 hours worked), which would be less than the applicable $7.25 an hour minimum wage.

Montoya filed a collective action against CRST in January 2016 alleging that the defendant’s compensation policies violated the FLSA.

U.S. District Court Judge Patti B. Saris granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, finding that drivers’ sleeper berth time in excess of eight hours was indeed compensable and must be included when calculating whether CRST pays drivers an hourly wage that meets FLSA minimum wage requirements.

CRST appealed.

Benefit of the employer

In affirming summary judgment, the 1st Circuit rejected CRST’s argument that, under the “predominant benefit test,” sleeper berth time should not be considered work under the FLSA because drivers were “waiting to be engaged” and thus their time was their own.

In particular, it found the employer’s reliance on the DOT’s hours-of-service regulations — which require drivers to be relieved from all work responsibilities during their 10-hour off-duty period and which exclude sleeper berth time from “on-duty” time — to be unpersuasive.

Lipez noted that the DOT regulations do not address compensation, and the DOT itself has cautioned employers against using its classifications of off-duty time to guide payment issues.

The panel similarly rejected CRST’s argument that drivers could do “anything they have a mind to do” during their sleeper berth time, making it predominantly for their own benefit.

“Though drivers may be able to engage in some leisure activities, the nature of these activities is restricted by the drivers’ presence in the sleeper berth of a moving truck — a small space, containing only some basic living essentials, that drivers cannot leave until the truck stops moving,” Lipez wrote.

Additionally, the panel pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1944 Armour & Co. v. Wantock decision, which stated that time does not become the worker’s own merely because the nature of the duty left time “hanging heavy” on the employee’s hands and the employee and employer cooperated to make the resulting confinement and idleness more tolerable.

“Similarly, here, the drivers’ time is not their own merely because they can pass the time spent in the sleeper-berth by watching a movie or surfing the internet, activities that are the modern-day equivalents of cards and the radio,” the panel found. “The fact that the drivers are typically traveling during time spent in the sleeper berth also suggests that such time is for CRST’s benefit.”