Williams v. Jacksonville Terminal Co., 315 U.S. 386 (1942)

MR. JUSTICE BLACK, dissenting, with whom MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS and MR. JUSTICE MURPHY concur.

I think the judgments should be reversed. It appears to me that the question in these cases is: upon whom does the statute impose the duty of paying a minimum wage, the employer or someone else? There is no ambiguity in the congressional mandate that "[e]very employer shall pay to each of his employees . . . wages . . . not less than 30 cents an hour." I am unable to agree that tips given to red caps by travelers are "wages" paid to the red caps by the railroad.

The employers here could have openly charged a fee for the services performed by red caps. It appears that they have now adopted such a system. It is said that there is no practical difference between a system under which the railroads openly impose a charge on the public and one under which the red caps accept from travelers so-called tips, treated by the railroad as a part of the red caps’ wages. Generally, the traveler who pays a railroad charge knows he is paying it to the railroad. One who gives a red cap a tip does not necessarily know that he is thereby helping the railroad to discharge its statutory duty of paying a minimum wage to its employees. The tip paying public is entitled to know whom it tips, the red cap or the railroad. A plan like that before us, which covertly diverts tips from employees for whom the giver intended them to employers for whom the giver did not intend them and to whom any kind of tip doubtless would not have been voluntarily given seems to me to contain an element of deception. And I think that an interpretation of the FLSA which permits employers to benefit from such a plan does not accord with the meaning of the language used by Congress.