PORTAL PAY CLAIMS

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 February 1947, Page 5

PORTAL PAY CLAIMS

FEDERAL COURT DISMISSES CASE UNIONS’ SUITS AFFECTED DETROIT, February 10. Federal District Judge F. A. Picard dismissed portal to portal pay claims by employees of the Mount Clements Pottery Company. Judge Picard ruled that both “walking time” and “make-ready time” involved in the case were “de minimus”—too trifling to be a basis for additional pay; that the concept of portal time does not apply to the general field of manufacture except in a relatively small number of cases; that if any portal claims should be allowed they should not be retroactive beyond June 10, 1946, which is the elate of the Federal Supreme Court decision upholding the principle of portal pay for pottery workers. Judge Picard’s judgment, if upheld by the Supreme Court, may result in the dismissal of at least a large share of the 5,000,000,000 dollars in retroactive portal pay claims filed by the Congress of Industrial Organisations unions against industries throughout the nation. Judge Picard suggested that any portal time under 20 to 25 minutes is customarily considered trifling in industry, and should not require compensation. He found that the Mount Clemens workers’ maximum walking time was 6.2 minutes daily. He disallowed walking time going to and from lunch. .

Judge Picard, in dismissing the case, said that never before had anyone attempted to bring time spent in walking and preliminary activities into such a narrow, picayunish, meagre sphere. Respondents to the avalanche of portal-to-portal claims welcomed Judge Picard’s judgment, but pointed out that the judgment might be reversed on appeal to the Supreme Court. Moreover, among the claims filed were believed to be many which might not fail on the basis of the “de minimus” doctrine on which Judge Picard rejected the Mount Clemens claim.