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DRAFT FOR ATTORNEY REVIEW — NOT FINAL

Section 7

Citation
Section 7
Parent Document
Marvin v. Hodgson, 33 Cal. 2d 439 (1949)
Jurisdiction
California (state)
Effective Date
1949-02-01

Full Text

1,669 chars
The United States Supreme Court has declared that under the Pair Labor Standards Act “as a matter of law employer and employee may establish the ‘regular rate’ by contract.” (Walling v. A. H. Belo Corp. (1942), 316 U.S. 624, 631 [62 S.Ct. 1223, 1227, 86 L.Ed. 1716].) In the Belo case, where “the purpose of respondent’s arrangement with its employees was to permit as far as possible the payment of the same total weekly wage after the Act as before” by agreeing with the employees upon a new and lower “regular rate” of hourly pay, that court further established that “nothing in the Act bars an employer from contracting with his employees to pay them the same wages that they received previously, so long as the new rate equals or exceeds the minimum [40 cents an hour, § 206 (a) of the act] required by the Act.” (316 U.S. at page 630.) Other cases following the Belo holding are Atlantia Co. v. Walling (1942), 5 C.C.A., 131 F.2d 518, 521; White v. Witwer Grocer Co. (1942), 8 C.C.A., 132 F.2d 108, 111; General Mills, Inc. v. Williams (1942), 6 C.C.A., 132 F.2d 367, 370; Shepler v. Crucible Fuel Co. (1944), 3 C.C.A., 140 F.2d 371, 373; Bergschneider v. Peabody Coal Co. (1944), 7 C.C.A., 142 F.2d 784, 786; see, also, Murray v. Noblesville Milling Co. (1942), 7 C.C.A., 131 F.2d 470, 474, cert. den. 318 U.S. 775 [63 S.Ct. 832, 87 L.Ed. 1145], In the White and the General Mills cases agreements between employer and employe for a “reduced basic hourly rate” under which, with time and one-half for over 40 hours each *445week, the weekly pay remained the same as prior to the effective date of the Fair Labor Standards Act, were upheld as valid under the act.