In a recent case, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held that “worm farming” employees are not entitled to overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act because worm farming is agricultural.
The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ensures that employees covered under the Act receive overtime pay for time worked in excess of forty hours. However, certain areas of employment, such as agriculture, are exempt from the FLSA’s overtime requirements .
The FLSA defines agriculture as:
[f]arming in all its branches and among other things includes the cultivation and tillage of the soil, dairying, the production, cultivation, growing, and harvesting of any agricultural or horticultural commodities (including commodities defined as agricultural commodities in section 1141j(g) of Title 12), the raising of livestock, bees, fur-bearing animals, or poultry, and any practices (including any forestry or lumbering operations) performed by a farmer or on a farm as an incident to or in conjunction with such farming operations, including preparation for market, delivery to storage or to market or to carriers for transportation to market.
Although the FLSA states that the exemptions should be narrowly construed against employers, courts have previously held that the exemption is meant to cover the whole field of agriculture. This leaves courts with the problem of determining exactly what kind of employment qualifies as agriculture and should therefore be exempted from FLSA overtime requirements.
This was the issue before the Sixth Circuit in the case John Barks and Brenda Hoffman v Silver Bait, LLC, Court of Appeals case 15-5175. In this case the court had to determine whether a company that farmed bait worms was in the agriculture industry for purposes of the FLSA. The FLSA states that the broad meaning of agriculture is meant to include any practices performed by a farmer or on a farm or in conjunction with farming operations. To reach a decision in the case the court looked at factors such as the nature and purpose of the company, the setting in which the employee works, the general type of work conducted and the purpose of the work.
The Court found that worm farming does fall within the agriculture industry because of the manner in which they raise, care for, and harvest worms to be sold. After looking at these factors the Court found that worm farming is properly within the field of farming for FLSA purposes and therefore the employer does not need to pay employees overtime for their farming-related work.
This article was written by Laura Barrera.
