ELAINE L. CHAO, Secretary of Labor, United States Department of Labor, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. TRADESMEN INTERNATIONAL, INC., Defendant-Appellant., 310 F.3d 904

Summary

The issue was whether an employee's attendance at a safety training course was "involuntary" and within the meaning of 29 C.F.R. §§ 785.27-.28 (2002) and therefore compensable under the FLSA, where the employer made the training a precondition of employment, but allowed the employee to complete the course within a reasonable time after commencing employment, yet also established that the employee would be terminated if he or she did not complete the course in a timely manner. The district court held that the employees' attendance in this case was involuntary and that the employer was therefore required to compensate them for time spent attending the course. The appellate court disagreed. The employees were performing no work while attending the safety classes and the subject matter was not directly related to their job skills. Therefore, the employer should not have been made liable for overtime pay for time its employees spent as students, rather than as workers. Because the training ...